


Bleak Alterations

by hauntedshoes



Category: Enter the Gungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical Temporary Character Death, Deconstruction Fic, Dissociation, Dissociative Amnesia, Existential Crisis, Gen, Gun Puns!, Nihilism!, Not Beta Read, Pre-Canon, Temporary Character Death, Unreliable Narrator, beta readers in this economy?, cosmic horror, i channel my anxiety into a haha funny pewpew shooting game, i mean when you create a culture where death means nothing what do you expect, lots of random headcanons, she sits on a throne of lies and psychological overcompensation, this started off as a dark comedy but then i noticed these characters have deep seated issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23760013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedshoes/pseuds/hauntedshoes
Summary: Two Bullet Kin seek an audience with their Goddess.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	1. Battle is the Cure

An endless cycle spent in a gun filled dungeon does wonders to prepare you for the cold and uncaring nature of the universe. The gundead had a kind of farewell that the gungeoneers would pick up: ‘May you be granted dignity in death’. Although it probably sounded paradoxical to them since most of them weren’t given permission to die and when they did, their situations barely changed. Not allowed to leave on their own accord they would continue to run without direction like a Rubber Kin on shotgun coffee, eventually without their minds too. They acted as if they were alive, amusingly enough.

  
To the Bullet Kin, it actually meant something. For one death was more an aspect of a cycle, so the current state of their functional bodies was of little concern to them, death was quick, painful and frequent. Secondly, dignity in death was itself a rarity in the gungeon. Despite being slaughtered in masses, the gundead did try their best to preserve the bodies of their kind in the hollow but ‘their best’ was practically worthless. The magic of entangling life, death, everything in-between, settling what onlookers saw as an eternal battle, a stable divide which had been broken! Coming back from the dead, as was being revived from it was a commonality. Gungeon law decided that the bodies of criminals were free to be desecrated and ammomancers who were shut down in the hollow would revive them, soulless as their punishment and as a deterrent system. Although, not everyone who wasn’t a criminal was spared from the rituals that went on there. If you were lucky and bored enough to keep your soul, then rising up into the upper levels to lurk around your former residence without needing a shell to do so. The idea of someone resting forever with peace and respect was a poignant and highly unlikely one. 

  
The light sounded chippy goodbye, ‘May you be granted dignity in death’ was partly ironic at least, but also close to impossible. Even those that had gained some of the highest amount of respect while existing physically in life were not guaranteed a peaceful death where they would lay untouched. A cessation of the cycle, what the outsiders would call a miracle. 

  
Sometimes travellers, after the gun that can kill the past or not, were most often shocked the first time that they died. Even those that considered themselves prolific dungeon delvers could be seen trembling, begging. They wake up. They end up back where they started. Most of the gundead will never go above the keep but some of us imagined that there was some kind of comfort there at the top of the gungeon, because all of the gungeoneers weren’t used to such a thing. They would comfort each other and say ‘It’s alright, you have another chance’ eventually they work out that having another ‘chance’ is not a good thing. 

  
The gundead, most of the timelines just got up again after dying. They’d just wake up and wander back to whichever station they were guarding. Whichever job they were doing, unless you had died in some strange way outside of Kaliber’s reach or because the authorities decided they wanted to punish you that way, your soul wouldn’t vanish forever. You’d die but wake up in the same body over and over like perfect clockwork. Functional, metal systems. 

  
One advantage that the travellers did seem to have was their ability to mostly retain their individuality. A well-shaped firearm needed all of its components to work, nothing out of line and everything would be reshaped and replaced. The gungeon might reshape its delvers, but it does not, in the same way, replace them, even if they belong to it.

  
Individuality and such things weren’t useful to the gundead. Talents were helpful, but they were largely found and granted upon by your creation. They let you make art or write whether productively or just for your own reasons. Sometimes Bullet Kin would attempt it to ease their minds between training and drudgery. Sometimes they’ll stay there. Sometimes they’ll sit and collect shrapnel in the keep’s many libraries, but most likely they would vanish eventually. Most efforts would go to waste.

  
Waste being the polite term – the correct term was erased. The limited-time between the stupid gungeoneers racing through here only to inevitably trip over or run into some shotgun kin’s head and die. Our home is safe. The gun is safe. We should have the decency to feel a sense of smug happiness for those moments, but this little knack made it so whatever we tried to create would be inevitably destroyed. Maintaining culture when oblivion was a flash of light away was borderline impossible even if we tried. Every single project, idea, concept that we tried to manifest, unless they were highly favoured by dear Kaliber herself would vanish in an instant as would the memory of them. ‘Gungeon giveth, gungeon taketh away’. 

  
Of course, everything eventually ends and goes to nothing, and if the Bullet Kin still exist at that time, we’ll greet the dying universe with a quiet wave goodbye and thanks for all the guns. The idea that all our efforts will go to nothing. Whether it be our combat abilities, any creative endeavours or our very souls the repetition brought us the frequent reminders that one day the abyss will stare back in our face and eat what it did not deem worthy and we would often be taken with it. The gungeon would not care for your creations, and neither did the rest of the universe. Why was it only here that we were forced to realise that!? Why only here… 

  
“Spire, are you alright?” I heard the tapping of feet.

  
“I lost my freaking revolver!”

  
I pushed the small red ammomancy book off the side of the table but not before gleefully tearing out one of the pages and having it fly across the wooden surface. The library, this time was not spacious. Aside from the table, I was at there were two others. This room of the gungeon was taller than it was wide and even regards to its lengths this one was relatively short. We were lucky this time, there wasn’t much room for other Bullet Kin aside from me and Leaf. There was privacy to think. Too much privacy so that I would be forced into being alone, with my thoughts. 

  
“Don’t hurt it, you’ll make it angry!”

  
“Wouldn’t you like to know Leaf? You’re still scared of the books?” 

  
“As much as anyone else, do you want your revolver or not?”

  
I huffed and tapped my tiny hands on the table, impatiently, “Well, of course! Hand it over!”

  
“Geez, you’re always leaving it lying around!” the revolver was thrown next to me, somehow not firing off as it bounced, a small crack appeared on the wood. 

  
I widened my eyes and shook my head before bashing down onto the table unceremoniously. The entire thing broke, and I smirked.

  
“So now we’re going to have to replace that too?!”

  
“Oh, come on, it's not like that’s a bother…”

  
“Please, just pick up your revolver and get a move on, you’re spending more and more time here every time I find you.”

  
Since I was holding the revolver in my hand, I calmed down a little, “Maybe I am?” I made sure to keep a hold of the paper I had ripped out at the same time. 

  
“You keeping that?” Leaf asked

  
“It is the right page this time, I’m sure!”

  
“You’ve had enough times to find, so it better be,” Leaf made a high-pitched chuckle.

  
“Enough times… there are a lot of books here, Leaf, and they keep shifting around…”

  
“Is that why your revolver ends up in the most random of places? Did the gungeon put it there?”

  
I looked back at them, they were still smiling, damn it, “No…” I tried not to frown back, I probably already looked as manic as it was possible for a bullet to look, the dark eyes having already manically looking over so many pages and worrying about my future.

  
“Now stop losing it! You don’t want them to start suspecting thing of you, the twins might issue an ardent punishment if they think you’re leaving it there on purpose…”

  
I turned around. The smashed table behind me, stacks of books with too many colours. Their contents repeated because of how unaware most of the gundead were of their own writings. Most of it was just similar facts about basic ammomancy or gun mechanics so that the Bullet Kin could take notes. If you had enough patience to sort through everything, then you could find some odd gems or tangents of forbidden knowledge that you could come across. Still, the time you would have spent searching for the exact book was seemingly endless – good thing the gungeon granted its inhabitants near infinity. Me and Leaf had gone into this knowing that time would eventually come onto our side no matter how long that it seemed to take. At least now, timelines later, the search appeared to be over. So long as I could remember the location of the book, the gungeon at least deemed this creation of information worthy of being kept – not that it was the kind of information that the Bullet King or even the High Priest probably wanted to see someone going around sprouting.

  
“On purpose?” I shook my head, “They know what a mess I’ve been since I was created, they probably have it down on my archive” I shrugged with my non-existent shoulders.

  
“Intentional or not, if Shades gets his eye on you, we’re both spent as far as I’m concerned!”

  
“But it wasn’t on purpose, it was…!”

  
Leaf looked down awkwardly, “Just, please, for Kaliber’s sake stop making yourself look so shifty…”

  
I walked over very slowly, kicking one of the many scattered books on the ground, causing it to fray out everywhere. I reached out and tapped the side of Leaf’s casing, “You really are scared, aren’t you?”

  
“I’m… being cautious, I don’t want to end up soulless especially after I’ve already seen so many go… and those books really can bite you, I swear!”

  
“All these nerves are unnecessary, you are acting as if you care about me or something… isn’t that kind of pointless,” I tried to phrase it softly.

  
“Care? No? You’re the only person who knows where that book is now. You’re an asset that’s all,” Leaf looked up from the floor and stared at me with their small black eyes instead, “I need you for this one task, you’re useful to me, I’m useful to you. I’m just tired of all the wasted kin, that’s all!”

  
I shoved them a little, nowhere near enough to break the casing, of course, the light sound of chipping rang out as I poked them, “Of course, that’s always how it is,” the sheet of paper continued to get mangled in my hand.

  
“How it should be for us, right? I’m not one of those young kin who cares too much…” he stepped back, and their eyes narrowed, “Are we going to be reading that together or not? 

  
“Well, I suppose we should be now I –”

  
The door behind us smashed onto the wall. Its little hinges being just enough to make Leaf jump. The blue shotgun kin, ‘Tree’ I think she went by, their high-pitched cheery inflexions making the information conveyed worse every time, “Everyone we have roughly 50 seconds before another gungeoneer enters. One of the humans I think, goes by ‘Manny’ he’s trying that weird roll thing again, so be on the lookout!”   
How many times was it now? Had to be at least fifteen. I’d need to check.

  
Tree was more chipper than the last time she was waving at the both of us without even noticing how dead-eyed we both looked. She stopped and stared so maybe she noticed something, but then she just grinned, “Do well. Commencing lockdown.”

  
She left, and the massive bronze door frames shut, creating a thunderous bang against the carpeted floor. We were silent again, there wasn’t anything to say, and there shouldn’t have been anything to say. We both knew what was going to happen. The doors continued to close across the keep leaving the echo and thunderous claps to ring out my head. Holding onto this sheet of paper will undoubtedly get in the way of operating my revolver. I was created to be a protector, I think, not for any other role than some timeless metal fodder. 

  
The chance of death to give me life!

  
We share a silent acknowledgement. The same meaningless one, all of the Bullet Kin would do the same one. That they were both ready for what they needed to face. There was always that small chance that they might not ever see each other again. 

  
Ten.  
Nine.  
Eight.  
Seven.  
Six.  
Five.  
Four.  
Three.  
Two.  
One.

  
_Gracious firepower! Make it seem they don’t have another chance! Reach forward with attempted focus! A prayer to believe that you’ll for once have good aim! Have their end before you reach yours with great luck! Make it seem this just once! Nothing is beyond nothing! Kaliber is beyond everything! There is nothing to be scared of! It will happen one day! It will happen one day! It will happen one tomorrow! It will happen one tomorrow! It will happen one tomorrow!_  
_It happens fast enough for it to be a blur._

  
This thing won’t fire with one hand.  
It aimed poorly most of the time.  
It will happen one tomorrow!  
It couldn’t hit anything.  
It wouldn’t.  
It will happen one tomorrow!  
Like normal.  
Like it doesn't matter.  
Which it doesn't.

  
**It doesn't!**  
**It would never…**

  
Their shoes tap along the carpet, reaching forward louder and louder as they stepped on the wood. Pushing globes, spheres of blue and green out of the way. They crashed onto their faces as if they were made of glass. A click across the room causes the chandelier on the left side of the room to collapse. The golden metal twists and shifts upward as the little diamonds that once dangled downward, reflecting the warm colours of the keep had been annihilated it the downfall. It was a downfall most beautiful explosion.

  
Red and gold and orange and dashing breakage. I think Leaf only just about managed to move out the way of the small calamity. Their shell was out the corner of my eye barely scraping by. If they could scramble together enough time, then they could at least find a table to duck behind which would give them just a bit more time…

  
**A bit more worthless time**  
**It will happen one tomorrow**

  
If they are coming closer. The strange bouncing human. Then regardless of effort. I have no choice. I can just see that one of still remaining tables that had turned onto their side and taking various hit from the loud gunshots.

  
Leaf would soon be done for. Their engine of life would cease as it had done before. If I was friends with Leaf, I could have been able to shed a tear from these burning eyes. I was not friends with Leaf. We were not cast from the same mould, there was no reason for a connection to be there, it would be irrational. The so-called act of mourning would be drawn out and useless emotion. Even thinking about…

  
It will happen one tomorrow!

  
Is he coming? Is he here? Is he human, I think that’s what I heard? I was keeping track of it. He was a human. A human with ties to the hegemony of man, elusive, disgusting. My pulse quickening. This metal body grows warmer with the thrill of a fight coming closer. I need this. I need to end him before I – I – I can’t!

  
Boom!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something something bullet kin naming:  
> Enter the Gungeon is a consistent game which cares about its lore /s  
> However, Bullet Kin do have somewhat consistent naming I've worked out through inference. That small amount of consistency is that their names are descriptive or describe their environment (most likely things found in the gungeon: Red, Toadstool, Smiley and Shades). It is also assumed they can change their names if they have to.  
> Hence why Spire and Leaf have names the way they do.  
> 'Spire' also comes from the word 'shoot' in Old English and 'Leaf' can just be a pun on 'Lead'.  
> Also 'Bullet Kin' is a proper noun, yes I checked, yes I hate it.  
> 


	2. We Can Think of Mathematics

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

The numbing pain subsided. My nerves reattach themselves. I start thinking clearly again. I was alive. I was alive and, in my body, as I was before. 

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

The usual silence of keep’s library areas returned. I was no longer burning from the strange charge of bloodlust, or cold from literally being dead. I stretched and blinked several times before opening up my eyes completely. The paper in my hand was gone. My revolver was still next to me but not in my hand. The contents of the room had shifted again – I was still in the library, but this time it had made itself massive. 

Several bookcases had formed large pillars inside of the room: sets of threes. There were a great many more books this time, including books that would have been stashed into other rooms of the gungeon in previous timelines. Luckily, I had been killed and revived long enough to remember the near-mathematically sound systems that the gungeon used to reassemble the objects that were created inside of it and approved to exist.

When things in existence could only be approved in an untamed and fair-weather system on the mood of a reincarnation goddess and an undead overlord, there had to be some sense of order, even if a vague one. Both of them were both sentient creatures with a sense of awareness. Whether the bullet kin caught on to the systems was another matter. It was as subconscious, and it was conscious; something that had to ‘click’ with you to make sense. Most bullet kin didn’t have the patience to work out something so esoteric – even if it was in service to Kaliber, their minds always too crowded. 

After analysing the structure of the room, the research, I had conducted should have been in a red-backed book: ten paces from the left wall, third row. Tap. Tap. Tap, Of course, it was there. Once I had found the original source, the new placement of this object was easy to track down. The books had a certain arrangement, even if that arrangement was strange. 

Leaf still hadn’t got up. I had seen their body just past the side of a table. Leaf was shorter than most other Bullet Kin, and it was a feature that was identifiable enough to tell them apart when they were laying down dead. Regardless of how many times I had seen Leaf wake up, the hidden doubt still existed. When death here was permanent (which was rare) it would have to be for some kind specific reason. Even after all my years of being here, I couldn’t recall a time where a Bullet Kin or those like us had their motionless bodies dragged down to the hollow after an ordinary encounter with the gungeoneers – that was nowhere near an accomplishment worthy of Kaliber letting go. Nevertheless, it pressed in my mind, the idea of them being gone forever – erased. 

I picked up the book and started to run through the pages again. Twenty-three pages in. Fold in the page number with a little ‘misfire beast’ ear. 

Leaf is behind me.

“Spire, you left your…”

“Revolver?”

“You want it back?”

“Leave it,” I sighed, “I’ve found the page, so I guess once we’ve read it, we’ll be ready to go!”

I nearly threw the page I had ripped out at them before they interrupted, “Leave it? Are you, why are you -”

A Bullet Kin forgetting a weapon would be one thing. It only struck me moments later how weird it must have sounded when I said to just leave it alone. Leaf wouldn’t be helping me if they weren’t just a little bit deviant, they honestly should have expected it.

“Just leave it, I’ll get it later…”

I kept holding onto the book, using just the tiny sphere of my hand. It floated between the two sections of my body – suspended awkwardly between my casing and the small circular nub. I started walking away from Leaf in the other direction, “Just let me check the wall again.”

I had been proud of the wall. Some ‘creation’ of mine, no matter how simple it was, had withstood the powers of the gun that could kill the past, although it was entirely unknown as to why it was permitted to. A tracking system to all the current gungeoneers, their appearances. Although, so far, there didn’t seem to be a rhythm to it aside from them all getting better.

Leaf followed me as I knew they would. We wandered through the open wooden doors and down a long corridor which lead to what was usually one of the largest rooms in the keep: bar some of the greenhouses. I always had the urge to run enthusiastically down the empty and frequently dark halls, but the better you left places, the better the gundead thought of you. Sometimes it was unavoidable but running down the halls like a maniac the same way that the gungeoneers did, smashing up every single pot, table or decoration in their line of sight was disrespectful and out of our jurisdiction to put it in fancy terms. Some damage felt unavoidable though, so long as we could hide the mess it was generally forgiven. Respect the gungeon, respect gundead law, respect the Lich, respect Kaliber – usually in that order. 

The wall was situated in a room of the keep that I had found was empty most of the time. There would occasionally be a few other Bullet Kin or Shotgun Kin wandering around, but if me and Leaf were sneaky enough, they wouldn’t take notice of the project. When we got there, it was luckily empty as it was on most occasions. 

No pillars, no barriers, just a hall with a grand fireplace and the image of an incredibly old gungeoneer looking over us. A gungeoneer whose presence felt still very poignant, they never turned up, but even then, it felt as if they were still there and not just as a painting. An eerie silence about him, an old soul captured in artwork. If I stared into the dark eyes of the old human man for too long, I would shudder, I was sure that the others did as well. Did they? 

Many of the gungeoneers became their own kind of icon, so much so that they would sometimes carve figures of them in an unknown location. Those figures would make their way down to the keep. People would admire them with a hint of scorn. They certainly moulded themselves into images after lifetimes as the gundead learned their quirks, abilities and even speech patterns. Their impressions on us a demonstration on how much of a grasp the gungeon had on them, tighter, it was morphing them into part of their décor.

We had left the wall behind a painting, so long as we removed it carefully, nobody would notice that we had even removed it in the first place. As far back as I could remember there wasn’t a painting here before we had started making the wall but luckily since there were so many scattered about the keep nobody really kept track of them. They weren’t cluttering up the gungeon, so everything just seemed normal.

Of all the creations that were allowed to remain in the gungeon, the only one of my own was a record of deaths. For the gungeon this sort of behaviour made sense, it did enjoy showing off how eternity existed in this place. A tally, each of a different colour, the colour representing a separate gungeoneer and when they appeared and of course, when they died.

Currently, there were at least three concurrent gungeoneers that would appear regularly. Three different colours, one for each of the regulars: blue for Manny, red for ‘Blockner’ (none of the gundead supposed that was his real name, a smart move on his part) and orange for Bello. We had established that both Manny and Blockner were clearly humans who knew each other, the gungeoneers could only come and challenge the gungeon one at a time, thank Kaliber. The gundead had generally assumed that Bello was also a human despite his massive size. He wasn’t as skilled as the other two since he didn’t have a clever way to defend himself. No ‘dodge rolls’ and no shielding either. I had heard other gundead muttering over how they were sure he would give up soon, resign himself in doing menial work for the gungeon soon enough. Manny seemed troubling, though, he was creative, powerful, he could really change something if he somehow managed to reach the lower layers consistently. 

A numbered tally of gungeoneer deaths was all well and good. Still, despite the various colours that were supposed to indicate their deaths, it also indicated the deaths of the gundead, specifically my deaths. The many many timelines which I had lost. Most other Bullet Kin don’t care, and with the rest of them, I am also expected to be entirely apathetic to the cycle. Yet, whatever was contained in my relentless slug was determined to not take it lying down, metaphorically or literally. Time was largely a fluctuating wave of nonsense here so things such as ages, or any stringent system, numerical, database observations all of them would be essentially pointless. My attempt at this had given some primitive form of what the outsider gungeoneers would probably call a ‘calendar’ a tracking of days. This calendar tracked lost days, ones which had never existed. The members of the gundead were far older than they looked, they had more experience than what their shiny cases or cute faces might have seemed. Even the youngest and most spirited of bullet kin had probably lived hundreds of lives, most of which fell into nowhere. 

Most bullet Kin were unaware of how old they really were or at least, it seemed that way as if they were blocking it our or trying to. It was more likely that the lack of tangible numbers in gundead society made it simply hard to comprehend. 

The wall was started 315 lifetimes ago, 316 now. 

“Leaf, do you have the pencil it’s…”

“Behind the painting, I know, you tell me every time…”

“Never forget.” 

Leaf tutted at me, he was still holding my revolver, clutched quite tightly. 

I marked on the newest reset. 

Those lines, there could have been minutes, days, hours or even years between them the length of time was indeterminable, but it at least was a unit of time that we could, against all odds, keep track of. It in a way had units, even if those units were a literally indeterminate number. It was something, and it was ours. Time goes from non-existent to occupying a sort of ‘bubble’ inside the mind of Leaf and me, consistency in an aimless place, our own self-discovered unit of time. 

I sighed, taking a look back at the eventually endless markings. Leaf came and stood next to me, they didn’t know that this would be the last time they would see this for a while. If both of us are to really realise our conversation with Kaliber.

“I’ll put back the painting, pass it over,” I commanded to Leaf, passing them the pencil at the same time.

“Don’t you want it back?”

“Want what back?”

“The revolver that you lost?”

I smirked at him, “Revolver, I lost?”

Leaf growled. I was unsure at which point Leaf had caught on to my messing around, how many timelines ago had that happened?

“Just give me back the painting, we won’t need it soon enough!”

Leaf’s tiny eyes shifted upwards, there was a glint in those black pits, I was sure it was one of anger.

“Won’t need this? We won’t need to keep track of time anymore? But that defeats the entire purpose of what you – ”

The painting, a heretical image of two kin sword fighting that looked misplaced from the gungeon if it were the accuracy of the depiction of our kind. Nobody chose to get rid of the paintings, most of them kept generating themselves around the gungeon without even a look of disgust from most of the gundead. Maybe they were distracted by the good brushwork it had, or the pleasant colours were nice to look at when you were disoriented and bleeding. 

“I read the instructions, Leaf, if we are to go, we have to go down.”

“Down? I haven’t been down in years – what if they catch me Spire?”

“Not even Tree has rooted you out yet,” I snorted, “I’m sure if we travel quickly, then gungeon proper will be no issue for us.”

“But they have records on me, on all of us, don’t they? Eyes everywhere and all that?”

“As far as they know you’re an upstanding member of the cult of the gundead!” I smiled and took my revolver from them, snatching it from their hand, “You’d really think they have records on all of us? We don’t matter, they wouldn’t keep track of metal so disposable.”

They shivered, “Who knows are you willing to take that risk?”

“Where did your enthusiasm go? Did time take that from you too?”

Leaf grunted, “Even if we do go, we’ll need to convince Smiley and Shades to let us go, we might just end up stuck anyway?”

I laughed at their frustration, “Oh, they’ll take any old excuse, they exist to train us and up to that point they don’t care anymore!” 

“If you’re sure…”

“It’s like I’ve rehearsed this!” 

Leaf pushed past me and placed his tiny metallic hands on our wall. They looked as if they were already missing it, “What about this? You can’t abandon this after the gungeon didn’t erase it – surely that meant something, didn’t it?”

“Leave it alone!”

“What?” they drew their hand from the paint, seemingly smudging it with the harshness that they held.

“We can still keep track of time,” I take the pencil out of Leaf’s hands, at least now I could hold both the revolver and the pencil.

I threw the revolver on the ground, “Leaf turn around,” I asked.

“Spire, what are you doing…?”

“Do you want to keep the calendar going or not?” 

“Want to? We need to!”

“Then turn around!” 

“What are you going to do Spire?!”

“Marking down the date! Look, just stand still!”

There wasn’t much a point in waiting, I grabbed hold of the pencil, tightly. I had to throw the revolver to the ground again as not to lose my focus. I was quick enough – almost quicker than I am in battle as I could recall – I latched the pencil into the side of Leaf’s casing. With the amount of strength, I gave it, I was able to leave a small mark on his casing. Enough for a dent to be made but not enough for it to be obvious or derive suspension. 

“Ow,” Leaf muttered, nonsense since I was sure they were not in pain.

“Our casing becomes the marker now, is that fair?”

Leaf rubbed their side and blinked, “Geez, you don’t have to try and pierce it so hard!”

I frowned slightly, “Right, sorry. This is how we’ll be keeping our calendar, no take-backs.”

“Yes, yeah, sure… just let me do it myself next time, assuming there is a next time.”

Leaf was often like this, but something in their tone this time that made my stomach wrench like he was actually stirring some emotion in me.

“Leaf! There will be a next time! I promise you! It will happen one tomorrow!”

“You really promise!”

I did what could only be described as the only way a living bullet could appear to nod, “Now, we both have some reading to do and some excuses to make!”

The paper unravelled in my hand and could be seen clearly now. Leaf shakily reached over to grab it. I pulled it away from them so that they wouldn’t snatch it away from me. 


	3. New Friends and Old Enemies are the Same

Despite their role and general presence, Smiley and Shades were rarely seen, not even in the Keep of the Lead Lord. Most young Bullet Kin and Shotgun Kin knew them well, at least in their current lifetimes they would. Smiley was considered by most to be a fair mentor, well-natured, forgiving to mistakes, perhaps even too forgiving.

Shades interacted a lot less with the newcomers. Some of the gundead didn’t even know what he got up to in the gungeon. Such a figurehead who seemed to do almost nothing. Most assumed that he had some kind of administrative role, but it could have been something more secretive, funnily befitting of the name. Whenever Shades could actually be seen, he was always seen alongside Smiley, he would never be seen alone.

The likeliest story is that the two of them were just close. Both of them were high ranking members of the gundead, so making connections with each other wasn’t too uncommon and carried less emotional risk. Uncommon or not, it was still strange for Bullet Kin to form close emotional connections so openly. The unpredictability of the gungeon meant that ‘friends’ come and went in ways you wouldn’t even know. Although many gundead couldn’t help forming close connections, they would often have those connections stripped away from the seemingly at random, or maybe they would forget they even had that connection in the first place – a scarier fate.

High ranking Bullet Kin were allowed more ‘friends’ than other gungeon dwellers. They knew that Kaliber and time itself was likely to favour them and their companions. They did something that made it so their faith regarded them as important, so they hardly ever worried about having what mattered to them erased. Perhaps it was just the jealousy inside of us that made us suspicious of them. Since everyone in the Keep of the Lead Lord knew Smiley or had known Smiley, or at least most had had least faint memories, the jealousy would rise in each passing timeline. He was a frequent reminder of what the Bullet Kin could have had knowing that they didn’t mean anything while simultaneously being told by the same person who had privileges they didn’t, that they did matter and what they were doing was worth all of their effort. He was an optimistic kind of fellow who hoped that said optimism would eventually rub off on others but often caused the opposite effect.

I had already told Leaf that we were to make the most reasonable reasons for venturing into gungeon proper. We were still his old students, and he did mention having a soft spot for those who studied under him, despite that being literally every one of us We both decided that it would be best if we acted happy to see him even if we really weren’t.

After a careful journey, we managed to obscure most of the Bullet Kin waiting around in the rooms. Some of them greeted us, wishing us a vague sense of protection (the best they could hope for) in their usual squeaking voices. A couple of them even asked if they could come with us, one of them even stating that they wanted to thank Smiley for what he had done for them and how he had made them feel ready for slaughtering the gungeoneers. They smiled at us. Leaf had looked at them with a with a face like an agonizer. I probably would have too, If I had remembered my time training, which I didn’t.

Leaf found themselves remarking on something else as we crossed the halls, which was funny, I couldn’t imagine them forgetting the details of this. If an otherwise poignant memory from another timeline served correctly – they panicked last time, you’d think strong emotion like that would have deemed the event necessary. Still, our emotional reactions didn’t always indicate significance.

It was inside one of the other library rooms, we had to skirt around several explosive barrels in order to reach.

“Do you know the name of that planet, Spire?”

“You’ve asked me this before. You forgot those times?”

“I think this reset got to me, I see it, and I’ve forgotten… I don’t know when exactly I forgot, I feel as if I’ve been avoiding asking you.”

“Avoiding?”

“I can’t pinpoint a reason why. It’s like Kaliber blocked it out on purpose.”

“I don’t think that’s can really be the reason, but I can talk about it again if you’d like.”

“Yeah,” they looked down at the red carpet for a brief moment, “Could you?” they looked kind of dead as if they had a fixation.

I picked up the globe, careful enough not to ruin the shiny gold base that it stood on. There were so many large spheres, and the structures they stood on were clearly real gold, something rarely seen in the gungeon and still likely ‘expensive’ (I have seen visitors with golden looking items clutch them tightly if they held them). Still, these globes were always propped up with what was certainly gold. Even if they were quickly destroyed – they were still important enough to be associated with the precious metal. The globes themselves felt somewhat non-descript. The continents were left ambiguous at best, but something in me wanted to redraw the lines and work them out, I daydreamed about it sometimes when I had a spare moment of boredom during waiting around for the next fight.

“It’s a globe of the planet Earth, Leaf, I think it’s a place pretty far from the gungeon…”

“Then why is it here?”

“The Lich is obsessed with Earth. He’s mentioned it in his teachings, he wants to leave around objects to remind himself of its importance, that’s what I think,” I passed over the globe I was holding to Leaf who struggled to pick it up with its weight.

“Its so far away?

I won’t question the Lich, but I’d like to know why he cares so much.”

“I think a lot of early gungeoneers came from this planet, some of the current ones too… I think humans come from here, and there sure are a lot of human gungeoneers.”

“He’s helping them keep some reminder of where they came from?” Leaf asked.

“More like mocking them for something that they will likely never get back,” I smirked at Leaf, they blinked back before throwing the globe back onto the ground.

“You better put that back in its place,” I glared at them.

“Only the gungeoneers would disrespect the Lich’s desires,” they slowly walked over to the golden stand again and gently placed the planet on top of it.

Even so far away from us and just a conglomeration of colours – something about ‘earth’ seemed pretty. I would have guessed it had a landscape of green, perhaps parts of it looked a little like our greenhouses. It must not have been a rarely expressed desire for a Bullet Kin, to see Earth. I had heard brief conversations about it, and like the Lich, we also seemed to romanticize the place. It felt as if it was the closest place to the gungeon even if it could have been lightyears away.

We abandoned the small room and continued onward. As fortune would have it, we did pass through one of those ‘greenhouse’ areas. The gundead grew flowers here and watered the grass even though it would never die and would never grow either. Little shrubs that seemed eternally green were planted along the sides, and slabs of stone formed tiny pathways going in all directions. There was always the temptation to skip across them.

Since we would never be able to go outside, we used this place as a kind of substitute. Most of the Keep of the Lead Lord smelt musty, but here it smelt fresh and light. Is it what the outside world looked like? Maybe it was a good simulacrum for it.

-

Shades and Smiley should have been hiding behind the largest door of the first chamber. If they were not, then we could probably ask the Bullet King or Gatling Gull (tangibly) for directions into the training room that was otherwise entirely off-limits for the gungeoneers.

I tapped the golden skull-shaped door, the one which indicated to any visitors the toughest resident on that floor. That resident always rotating. Even in the upper levels of the gungeon, these rooms sounded death knell. There had been at least several hundreds of gungeoneers, many of them renowned dungeon divers who claimed to have been through similar things before. Some who even claimed they would swipe the gun and be done with it. They died. Then they died again. Until they begged to get out and of course, couldn’t. The bright light in their eyes eventually died with them. Most of the gungeoneers were weaker than us on the inside. We knew that it kept us going.

The shiny skull doorway lifted its teeth and a dark and semi-empty hallway with the crimson carpet laid out for almost its entirety. The walls were a grim blue making the room look even darker than it already was. They should be in here!

“Smiley, Shades, hello?” my voice was oddly hesitant.

I squinted at the shadowed room; the few candles on the walls was not enough to make them visible. I couldn’t see the gold colour of either of their casing from this angle.

“Are you there?”

I heard Leaf hesitantly step backwards. I looked back at them; their eyes were low, a little fire from those candles caught in their eyes like a teardrop. I bet that they were remembering what they had told me about the revolver. They still thought that if we missed politeness, we would both cease to exist.

“We’re here! We’re there!” the voice laughed.

“You may enter,” a second voice said.

We both started walking inside. The sheer size of the so-called ‘boss room’ had been something that escaped me. Once they had come into view, I saw that Shades and Smiley were far on the other side of the room, glaring at each other. I took a guess that they were deep in conversation before we came in. Shades was frowning, he was probably eying us suspiciously under his cool glasses.

“You wanted to return for some reason, yes?” Smiley’s weird voice always made him sound as if he was trying to sing whenever he spoke.

“Uh, yes, it’s great to see you!”

“Very good to see you, yes” Leaf did that weird attempt at nodding of theirs again.

Smiley’s demeanour was happy enough to be sickening, so whatever the heck was going on in his hapless slug was a mystery. Maybe he tricked himself into not having many other thoughts other than those that kept him happy.

“Aw, you came in just to see me!”

“Well actually we need to make a request!”

“You want a request of us?” Shades questioned moving in our direction slightly.

“A small request, if that would be acceptable!”

Leaf was wobbling, I could tell. It was barely audible, but with each little wobble they drew closer to me

“Do we handle requests, Smiley?”

“Of course, we do! I can’t think of a timeline where we didn’t!”

Shades rolled his eyes under his glasses, I think, I would have suspected that he did that despite the grim room making his eyes invisible, that action just made sense.

“What is this request, do you need something from us?” Smiley’s eyes became far more intensely focused on both of us.

“It’s only a very small one, really it is.”

“Small enough, you had to bother us about it!” Shades said.

“Now now, our former underlings have come to us for advice, you have no reason to be so snappy!”

“Hey, they’ll have to run back if we get alerted to an entrant, so it has to be something that they are at least risking upsetting the lower level gungeon authorities for being out of place when the doors start locking down.”

“Then you can at least not draw it out with your arguing, Shades!” Smiley turned away from us. I looked back at Leaf, they seemed a lot calmer but with a muddled expression. We didn’t come here to expect arguing.

“Please, it is only a small request! We need to do something important!” I tried to change the inflexion in my voice to make it that of desperation.

“Woah! Okay! Don’t mind Shades, tell what it is, get on with it.”

Leaf sighed of relief but didn’t say anything.

“We would like a passage into Gungeon Proper, please, Smiley Sir.” My eyes lowered, and I performed what a human could perceive as a bow.

“Passage? You two?” Smiley stepped back, moving about the gungeon too much was something generally rare unless the gungeon had deemed you particularly powerful or worthy. Occasionally, moving about the gungeon would be seen as an unmerciful act especially if it was done out of curiosity or ‘for fun’ then you would have been seen as replicating the gungeoneers, the enemies of the gundead.

“It’s only for one thing, one small thing. We’ll come back soon,” I lied to the face of my leader.

“Well, I’m sure you are trustworthy!” the hint of suspicion in Smiley’s voice dissolved quickly, and he was back to his usual self, “What’s the reason though, we can’t let you outta here with a good reason, you know.”

“Well yes,” I pretended to sniff like something was caught in my eye, “I think Blu, I think he ran away again, we wanted to go and get him back, he might end up stuck this time!”

“Blu, the Blobulon? He got away again?”

“I saw him trying to leave the Keep of the Lead Lord!”

Blobulons were not native to the gungeon, so the authorities (who mostly consisted of kin) tended to ignore them for the most part. The punishments laid out by gungeon society’s laws often did not apply to them, and when they did, they were often too slippery (metaphorically and literally) to actually punish properly. Blobulons were bloodthirsty even by gungeon standards, outclassing the Bullet Kin and most of the gungeoneers or at least, most of their stories they told painted them that way. They had supposedly come from a vast empire beyond anything we could ever get to see before collapsing in their failed endeavours. Once their empire fell, they could not sate their bloodlust they made a deal with the gungeon so that they could keep the passion for conflict in their gooey bodies.

I’m not really sure how the contract worked. None of the low-ranking Bullet Kin did, and I wasn’t even sure the higher-ranking ones knew either. It was likely magical; I doubted an entire sentient species would want to live in the gungeon by choice. We were created by it, and the gungeoneers were trapped; there was no defence against that. If they had come here wholly by choice, then they would have to have a species-wide potentially biologically driven purpose, one which couldn’t be fought. One which kept them here purely through the forced hand of determined fate. In this case, they would have still had the choice but not really. They had an illusion of choice. Because of what they were, what had become of them, there was nowhere else that they could go yet they were convinced they wanted to be here.

“Then you better go and get him back, he shouldn’t be getting into the lower chambers so freely like that, maybe we missed him, those Blobulons really do slip away so fast!”

“They really are so determined in fighting that they’ll seek in anywhere!” I laughed at my poor attempt at humour.

“So long as you be back soon, least you suffer from the doors closing on you and the walls shifting!”

“We’ll be here to fight, Smiley, the Blobulon will return quickly, sir!” I did that weird fake bow again.

I grabbed onto Leaf’s small shiny hand next to mine, and we ran past Smiley and Shades to the other side of the dimly lit hall.

“May you have dignity in death, Sir Smiley!”

“And may you have dignity in death, former student Spire!”

As I looked back at him for the last time, I was disturbed, how much did Smiley remember that I didn’t? That I couldn’t? That I was not allowed to?

The gungeoneers mostly exited through the floors using the gungeon’s weirdly paradoxical elevator system – always down, never up, but they returned to the top anyway because they had. There was another transport system built into the gungeon that the travellers will never be able to access, and if they did, they would likely be too large to fit. A tiny door – stashed at the side of the ‘boss room’ that only kin and Blobulons could fit through.

If hearsay served, the tiny doorway would lead to an even smaller set of stairs and as I unhatched the wood. The hearsay was correct. Ahead was an even more darkly lit chamber. Squinting I saw a short wooden step which, even in the dark, would predictably lead onto more stairs falling into obscurity.

I smiled at Leaf, but I couldn’t see the expression they had in the shadows, I hoped that it was not the one of contempt or sorrow that I had seen with when I was with them discuss this plan. They had nothing more to fear. They should have been smiling like I was.

We would descend further into the nothingness together.


	4. I Am Made of Brief Reflections

Blu had been erased.

Blu was lucky, he was remembered after death. The denizens of the Keep of the Lead Lord still thought that he existed. He was somewhere in the gungeon, and he was waiting for the doors to come down again. He couldn’t be seen or felt, but he was still there in his way. He was there in their thoughts, and that was almost as good as being real.

Normally when the gungeon determined that you would have to die, one of three things would happen: you would die, and nobody would remember you even existed, you would die, but nobody would mourn your death since you were likely to return as a hollowpoint or you were a criminal that deserved it, or you would die, and nobody would remember you were dead causing everyone to still think that you were alive - that you were somewhere existing as you were before, but there was never enough space in a timeline to realise you were really gone.

Along with being remembered as ‘still alive’ by the gungeon’s standards, Blu’s stories would also be remembered, his history was something that had happened. Blu, like most of the other Blobulon, liked to think of himself as unique, powerful and had his tales to go along with that.

I could only imagine what a world outside of the gungeon looked like let alone a vast galaxy of planets. Did the stars shine brightly before you consumed them? How big were they actually? How many were bigger than this place? Pointless questions that I shouldn’t be asking myself, I would never get to see any of that so long as this building stood.

Pointless questions or not, the stories Blu had told to me, and the other Bullet Kin (that I could remember) made him, such a tiny thing, out to be so terrifying. He had really been taken to so many different battlefields, places of a size and stature I couldn’t even picture in my imagination. He and his comrades had destroyed or ravaged, rendered to nothingness, to oblivion under the sheer power of technology! Of course, none of his kind had that glory now. The humans had taken everything for them, aside from their taste for blood.

Their short-term urges for violence would surely be sated in an environment like this, a playground of sorts. Yet, like many of the creations the other gundead would come up with the destruction in their blood that trapped them down here would almost always be reversed as well. Eternal repetition, a kind of perpetual balancing as it turns out. All the warlords were quickly reduced to prisoners by the illusion of their own free choice.

The lighting only became more and more distant as we descended the stairwell. By comparison, the gungeon proper should be far more enclosed, much grittier than the keep. Gungeon proper was for criminals after all, and they did not deserve the warmth that light would provide them or that’s what gungeon law seemed to imply anyway.

Closer to the top of the gungeon, it was still hard to see. The tiny nub like legs that the Bullet Kin had weren’t necessarily the best for navigating anything that required an awful lot of lower body strength. The stairs themselves, as well as being completely in the dark, they were steep so even if you could place your foot on the step below you wouldn’t have a good judgement of how far you had to leap. The passageway was supposedly built explicitly for the use for the smaller gundead and them exclusively. Yet, it was still a struggle to reach the bottom, and ‘the bottom’ was simply the next floor. Those stupid bullet-shaped elevator things at least travelled ever so quickly. These narrow passageways took far too long to traverse.

There was a mere hint of orange-tinted light when we finally reached the other end: Gungeon Proper, place of criminals before their end, justice. The structure of the gungeon was always odd. You’d think the place of judgement would be at its lowest point so that the criminals wouldn’t see any of the light of life from the upper layers at all, but most of the gungeon’s work was conducted at its very lower layers. _Had I ever been to Black Powder Mine?_ The gungeon weaponry was created there, and most of the inhabitants would technically be ‘employed’ to gather up gunpowder, one of the few things here that would become scarce if it was not replenished physically. Below even the mines were the Hollow and the Forge. The Hollow was the place of death, finality, real finality. Lifeless bodies, regardless of who they belonged to. Those chances still being slim perhaps in the average timeline but with so many living things in the gungeon, most meet their so-called demise eventually, but most of the time that didn’t matter too much. The Hollow supposedly being a resting place, was anything but that, the bodies there were held to no form of respect. Below the Hollow was the place of birth, the Forge. Bullet Kin were created here, as was I. It was a strange design choice to have the place of life below that of the place of death. Was it naturally like that? Did Kaliber or the Lich want it that way for some kind symbolic reason? It wasn’t for anything practical that was for sure.

No matter how grimy, cold and lightless the gungeon proper was, I at least had the knowledge that we shouldn’t be spending a long time up here. We’d also hope not to run into the Gorgun, least we might end up as conscious decorations. That’s what the rumours said anyway, and I believed them. I thought that the gungeoneers must have enjoyed ramming into the living statues and having them scream and crumble.

“I think this is… are we where the gungeoneers come in?” Leaf asked as they came up the last step.

“Y-yes?” I answered, my eyes adjusting to the dim light produced only by two torches on the opposing stone walls. It was still a change from the near-complete darkness of the stairway. This meant that we might have to end up spending some time running between the rooms but this time we weren’t all too familiar with the residents or the layouts.

“We have a bit of a journey ahead of us it looks like, even more than anticipated.”

Leaf came forward, and their eyes started searching around for a pathway, “Do you think we should go North or South?”

“Do I look like I have a sense of direction? I snapped back at them.

“Well, uh, no,” Bullet Kin don’t often need to sweat, but I swear I saw a bead of sweat fall down their face as they answered that question.

“Let’s go north.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

So, we both went south.

Unlike the keep, Gungeon Proper was largely monotonous. Leaf got curious and started talking to a random Chancebulon because they said they had never seen one before. He was friendlier than he looked on the outside, then again, even the more dangerous, reckless Blobulon I knew in the upper chamber were polite and even friendly. Nothingness made us all into comrades.

The Chancebulon had some sense of humour about his situation, with some laughter discussed how he fondly remembered the time where he was subject to some considerable experimentation. That it kind of hurt but all of the army went through it and as such, it was no big deal. I admit that I hadn’t recalled seeing a Chancebulon in the flesh before, maybe I had done but said memory had been erased at some point. Regardless, he did have an aura of intimidation which he seemed to struggle to keep under control, maybe that’s what all the laughter was for. It must be hard to socialise when you are modified to function only as a warrior.

In the room next to the poor lone Chancebulon and some more useless gungeon pillars was a room occupied only by a mirror. Nothing else. No other members of the gundead, no obstacles that were set up to mess with the travellers – just one shiny, crystal clear mirror. Despite occupying such a grim, dusty area, this mirror looked remarkably well preserved. In the gungeon, everything must be restored, and thus, everything must be preserved. Still, even then through the various timelines, it would have likely picked up some of the gross dirt that caked itself with even just standing there – this was a supernatural surface. Glimmering.

Leaf was about to move on ahead, I don’t think they noticed that I was staring at it. There were no mirrors in the Keep of the Lead Lord and looking at myself like this, I started to think that there was a reason the gungeon kept us from seeing ourselves. Did the challengers up in the place we’ll never see stare at themselves often? The thousands and thousands of lifetimes they may have lived probably did change their appearance, not in a drastic, but likely in a subtle way. I don’t think they would have wanted to see themselves with the colour draining from their face as hope left them equally as quickly. It was safer for them not to look at themselves for too long. Bullet Kin and the rest were lucky that the same kind of physical and emotional drain didn’t come forward on our faces. It took what would have been years and years of acquired wounds before we would look any different, and even then, it was a badge of pride.

It wasn’t the reason I was entranced, though. I’m sure most Bullet Kin wouldn’t react the way I did to a version of myself in a mirror. Leaf had already wanted to leave, the only reason they didn’t run through the door was that I was acting so weirdly. Most of us looked somewhat similar after all, not that much in the way self-expression not because it was looked down upon but only because it was often too much trouble. It’s not as if the gundead didn’t have a sense of personal identity, I think, most of us were forced to push it to the back of our minds. We told each other apart through just little traits and mostly things that we couldn’t control. I was always told that I looked tired, and that is what the others remembered me for. They weren’t things that should need to change, looking in mirrors was pointless for the Bullet Kin. The gundead didn’t need mirrors. We didn’t need them. Yet I kept staring.

I kept staring.

My eyes grew wider. I had thought the stupid little round disks would pop out their sockets.

What’s wrong with me?

It can’t be just because this mirror thing is new?

I sensed that I was shaking. What for? No reason?

Because there was something wrong?

I blinked at the shiny figure in the mirror.

_That was supposed to be me?_

There was nothing or nobody else that it could be.

_Was I physically inside this body?_

Where would I be otherwise?

Is there another place?

_The background around me is fading with my reflection still here!_

_I am alone in this space now!_

_There is but me in this little petty frame of vision!_

I can at least slowly tap and reach out to what I thought was myself, yes there was an image, and that image was me there. This fading little image of a kin lost in then…

“What in the heck are you doing! Look out Spire, you idiot!”

Leaf was still here, and they pulled me back by my other hand. My shell hit the bottom of the hard dungeon floor. I screamed a little at the shock of the motion. Something in the real world was adjusting. Leaf was standing where I was, but they had a look of aggression on their face.

“Careful!”

Leaf was holding their own revolver tightly and all of a sudden, started shooting at it with some kind of fervent intensity. It smashed and cracked, obliterated the little crystal shards over the ground. I saw one of the shards diving towards the top of my casing and only stopping as I gained the small amount of energy needed to lift my hand upward and stop it diving into my skull. It still hurt like gunfire when it pressed against me though.

Leaf stepped back, “Oh, oh no…”

There was something else inside the mirror. I was still stranded on the ground with no chance to run. Leaf stood their ground, but at least they were armed. The mirror frame was moving; we both watched as a purple figure filled its frame. It looked much bigger than its tiny container, far bigger, even from my position on the ground I could see that.

I heard its breath, there was a grotesque growling that must have been its breathing. As it rose in our view, the squishy violet of its flesh passed, and one singular giant eye filled the whole frame. A golden eye with the tiniest of cat-like pupils flashed and blinked before disappearing and leaving nothing inside the mirror.

“What was that?!” Leaf screamed.

Leaf waddled back with an uneven step. They then tried to lift me off the floor with the little amount of strength that a tiny bullet might have. I got up, the world still noticeably blurry and something in my slug ringing.

Leaf looked at me with a panicked expression, as my eyes adjusted, I saw how they had shrunk in the presence of real, genuine fear.

I was still delirious, forming words was still a little difficult, “D-d-d-d did you get rid of it?”

The dark circles of their eyes slowly increased as they presumably, started to recollect what had happened to them, “No, but I think we need to get out!”

My mind took a few moments to wrap around that phrase in my semi-disillusion, get out of here but where? I sensed in the tone of their voice, they didn’t just mean the next rooms down.


	5. The Question of Crime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Just a heads up, this chapter has suicide references in it and also the death penalty, just in case stuff like that makes you uncomfortable.

Leaf pulled me through another door. My eyes were still tired; I was still weak. I wasn’t sure which way they were going, but they passed through so many doors until they stopped dead in their tracks.

We had reached a quiet room, a couple of Shotgun Kin were quietly discussing something, one of them looked back at us, blinking. Leaf hid behind one of the pillars inside the room.

“What are you doing, Spire, just listen and get behind here.”

My mind was still numb, and I was struggling to keep my eyes open, “Leaf what is…”

“Listen!” they would have sounded a lot more intimidating if they weren’t whispering.

My slightly faded eyesight wasn’t sure what they meant, those Shotgun Kin didn’t look all that threatening, they didn’t have any reason to be, and nothing I heard of their conversation was nothing more than mundane. They didn’t look like they were prisoners awaiting trial, nor did they look like guards; the highest likelihood is that they just lived here in this dirt-ridden place.

“You can’t hear them?”

“Them, but all they’re…”

“Not them, behind this door, keep down.”

Behind the door? What is there?

I zoned back in, by now most of so-called reality had returned to me. I did notice a kind of deep growl in the distance, most likely from behind the doorway.

“There’s something… something going on behind there…”

I hid behind the pillar with Leaf, trying to listen to whatever they were so fixated on. It was a struggle to make out, but I think there was another Shotgun Kin on the other side speaking in some kind of authoritative tone and then someone was crying.

“I think that’s them…”

“Them? You mean?”

“Yes, the Executioners… they are here,” Leaf’s voice broke off as they coughed from nerves, “I thought that we wouldn’t have to see them, I thought I would get away, I thought I would,” they started crying. They tried to keep their tearful display quiet, muffling and stifling until they couldn’t take it anymore and they had to let themselves cry openly, ugly, gushing with water streaming from those tiny eyes.

I shivered, leaning a bit closer toward them. Leaf was a tearful sort, I had often had trouble trying to comfort their outbursts when they happened. Sometimes the others would be there, the others would do a lot better. I would consider Leaf a cry-baby, but most of the kin were. Emotional. Kind of anxious. Reactive. Fitting: there was hardly time to think down here.

I could only very gently pat the side of their casing but not like that had much of an effect on them. I’m not even sure if they were aware, I was trying my best to comfort them with this tiny, limited metal body.

“Calm, calm down, Leaf, what did I tell you before we uh…”

Leaf was still overcome by their eyes, watering to hear my imprecise muttering. They really were paralyzed with fear, weren’t they? They really thought that gungeon law was going to just end them here.

I peered around the other side of the pillar the other Shotgun Kin had gone quiet, their expressions were one of concern, low eyes and tiny frowns, they seemed very hesitant to try and help though. Maybe they could tell that we denizens of this chamber.

“What are am I going to do? What am I going to do!” they spluttered, their moment of clarity not lasting long before they fell back into mindless crying.

“W-what what am…I?! W-what…”

Leaf’s stupid paranoia had made the whole idea they had of ‘keeping quiet’ disappear. In fact, their own crying was drowning out the deep voice of the Executioner as well as the crying of the other Bullet Kin. If they could have heard them, then they would probably feel concerned for Leaf, not looking to erase them.

I moved away from Leaf carefully. A reminder of my comment had apparently spurned them deep enough into their awkward crying bout that nothing could be done. They had given up. They weren’t entranced, just stuck, resigned. Something must have been filling their tiny slug enough to make them accept something that they had personally deemed fate. There was nothing they could do, not even move forward they thought they were going to be erased and there was nothing I could do.

It wasn’t pleasant. Hearing their muffled cries in a state of such weakness. I could have tried to shake them and tell them again that everything is okay, but it was as if they had been rehearsing this in the case that they ever had to visit the chambers below the keep. I thought that they wouldn’t have seen me as I moved towards the door. Perhaps they had heard me instead unless they could see something through those utterly blurry water-filled pupils. There was a creek as the wooden door was tapped open very gently when I was grabbed and pulled away suddenly by a much more aggressive Leaf which I got see a lot more rarely.

“No, no, damn you, damn it, Spire, you can’t go it there, you’ll…” the weakness of their grip was evident in their pitiful attempt to throw me to the floor.

“Well, one of us has to. If not we’ll just be trapped here when the gungeoneers come and the walls shift again, surely then the twins would have a word for us.” 

“Then if we end u-up back in the keep, then, we just stay, stay there, I’m not doing this, I’m not... not, it’s too much it’s…” their words trailed off with coughing and sniffing, they showed no signs of calming down despite having the ability to talk now.

I pulled myself from Leaf’s grasp and moved forward toward the door again, “I’m not going back, Leaf, this took us way too long to find, I’m not risking us losing this page or any of our memories, we have to get going!”

I tapped them but more violently, not in a way to comfort them this time, “We have to leave! But if you won’t leave, then I’ll have to leave without you!”

Leaf was caught off-guard by my regrettably vicious jabs at them, falling back into the pillar to the point of falling over. They let out a tiny cry despite taking no noticeable damage. They were still shaking, was it from the crying or was it from the fact I had pushed them?

“Excuse me, are you asking about the current execution? Were you invited or something?” one of the talking Shotgun Kin must have got tired of us yelling and went to settle what she thought was our disagreement.

Leaf opened their mouth about to reply, I stopped them delivering a curt, “Yes.”

“If you are so worried about arriving late then just say that you got caught in one of the trap rooms or something, I’m sure they won’t mind at all,” she blinked, her voice was high-pitched, smooth and her tone was calm. She seemed unshaken by whatever she had heard from the argument but probably worried, nonetheless.

I looked back at Leaf who had finally dried up the last of their tears, had opened their mouth in an attempt to reply, that was until I interrupted them, “I’ll go in and check with them if it’s okay for us to arrive, you wait here,” I nodded at Leaf, they nodded back defenceless.

As I walked away, the other kin took a step closer to Leaf in what I thought was another attempt at comforting them but this time obviously far less awkwardly. I think I saw them smile at Leaf and they might have also smiled back, but that could have just been my imagination playing a trick on me.

The discussion between the accused and the Executioner was a lot clearer now the walls had broken and the crying and screaming that Leaf managed to put out. The Executioner was on the right side of the room, behind them were torches that highlighted the dark cloth of their garb. Their eyes underneath held an additional glow, white and empty from their power to wield magic. Beside them were rows of other kin, mostly Bullet Kin. They stood equal distance apart with their tiny metal orb of hands together. Some of them with their eyes shut as a form of respect. Not gazing upon the accused in their final moments. At the very back of the room were large metal chambers with deep-set frowning faces at the top of their face. What I had only heard were called ‘Lead Maidens’.

The accused themselves stood eye to eye with the Executioner. They were trembling but in a way, a lot less noticeable than how Leaf was, and they were literally about to die! They were a Blue Shotgun Kin, they held a sheet of paper in front of them, it looked crumbled from all the time they had been made to hold it while so frightened. Was what was on that paper the crime? My heart jumped as a little bit of Leaf’s previous fear became real to me.

As I got closer, I realized that the accused Shotgun Kin was actually someone recognizable to me. Was that really Tree? Her voice was the same, but instead of her usual, commanding but comforting tone voice, she had been reduced to stuttering, not even able to fully pronounce the words that were coming out of her mouth.

“Will you repeat what you said, this will be confirmation,” the Executioner glared deeply at Tree, who whimpered in reply.

“Hmm,” the Executioner stopped with a hum and tore their eyes away from Tree, “Is that, did you just come in, are you late? Please, come and stand by me and pay your respect to this poor creature, I fear that her death may be looming nearer with each breath I take.”

I hid the paper I was holding; it was small enough to if I scrunched it up enough the revolver I was holding would hide it. There was a space for me in the line, or at least, there seemed to be. It would have been weird to assume that they allowed a certain amount of people to allow a kind of peaceful final passing. I walked past Tree, hoping that she wouldn’t recognize me. I think she was too flustered, wrapped up in her impending erasure to even recognize me if I was right in front of her face.

How did Tree get all the way down here so quickly? Leaf and I did spend some time moving through the staircase, and they could have used the one-way elevator. It was completely plausible that the legal forces of Gungeon Proper had invisible eyes watching us, waiting for us.

I’m not sure what was waiting for me, I hadn’t ever remembered observing a permeant erasure of another gundead before. As far as I was aware, they never took place in the first chamber, most of us who lived there would never get to see an execution in their waking moments of existence. I thought I would never have to see one. Perhaps this was normal to those who lived in the Gungeon Proper as citizens? Their shut eyes did imply that they had some kind of serenity in a way that signalled they must have been here before. A poignant pastime.

“Apologizes for the late arrival of the onlooker, the punishment being drawn on for much longer than was necessary,” the voice of the Executioner was calm as Tree muffled out something in her sorrowful panic.

“Please, read out the reason you stand trial again, every word must be considered, even if the signs of your innocence is wavering. Yet, it is the only evidence you have, we do not erase for no good reason.

I tried to shut my eyes like the rest of the audience, but it was still too tempting to observe my surroundings. I slowly opened one of my little pin-prick eyes partly so that I could see the blurry outline of Tree’s body. Before she even got to speak again, I heard the sound of the Lead Maidens behind the rows of audience clatter, their metal sides bashing against each other in a kind of excitement. They were anticipating the worst for sure.

Through my half blurry vision, Tree’s nervous expression faded for a second. She must have recognized me. I wonder if she knew I was watching her or if she thought my eyes were shut still? She wasn’t frowning, but she stared at me and forced herself to smile. It warmed me to see her attempt to console me just like she was used in every timeline. Was it just habit? Did she want to do her job one last time? Gungeon law acts on Kaliber’s will. I would never see her again, but someone else would likely take her place so quickly that we wouldn’t even notice. I didn’t smile back, if I had, then the Executioner might have suspected something. I probably ruined her last minutes before her erasure.

“The evidence, attest to it, so we may get this over with,” even the Executioner was stuttering over their words. I think they must have held at least some regret from their job, even if it was literally built into them when they were created. In the end, only they could consciously erase us, and they would always bear witness to it.

Tree finally got to reading the paper, “I’m sorry, but I think this might be the last time we die together. It’s better for me that I give this burden to another forged in my design. I’d rather not see you bleed out like that again. It’s because I can’t save you that I have to go through with this. I want to try and erase myself. I hope that you don’t have the emotional capacity to remember me. If this goes as it should, then you shouldn’t. I don’t belong here, but perhaps you’ll get someone to support you here that was crafted much better than I…

Tree,” as she looked at the bottom of the sheet, her hand started to tear the edges as she trembled. The message was breaking.

“Will this be my final time reading, please, I want to go now,”

Suicide. Tree had wanted to get erased herself. They had put her on trial for her attempts at such. Permeant self-erasure was distinctly looked down upon by all the gundead, apparently in a way that was worthy of erasure by execution.

A paradoxical thing, but I suppose the law here would be in such a way. Wanting to end your own existence was punishable by the erasure of your existence. Was it some kind of bureaucratic flex over who had the right to terminate existence itself? Or was it merely the will of Kaliber that one could not be seen as running away from their purpose and those that did were objectively not suited for it? The trial itself felt equally paradoxical, strange, just like the law itself.

One thing the self-erased could be able to do is allow themselves some peace when they died. They would likely be appropriately buried and could maybe return as a Hollowpoint if they so wanted. The assumption granted to those who had died simply during the resets while they were doing their job that they had died because fate had needed them to and there would always be the chance that the other gundead would remember them, a chance was all most felt that they needed.

Most at least had a wish to be remembered with a hope it would come true, but Tree didn’t. If her confession was correct, then she didn’t want anybody to remember her. She didn’t want that peace in death or so-called ‘escape’ that she was likely put on trial for.

Those who were removed from their current roles, erased by execution had a different fate. Arguably one even worse than being forgotten. If you were remembered, you would almost solely be remembered as a traitor. Not only that, but the idea of a final erasure itself was left up to uncertainty.

At the top of the gungeon, the story of the spent below seemed like a legend. An unholy deterrent system that only those in the depts were familiar with. Criminals whose souls were ripped from their bodies and then reanimated in their thousands in order to scare away the dungeon delvers, overwhelming them with the mindless, soulless empty shells that would be forced to throw themselves at the enemy. Repeatedly. Their minds empty, filled with hunger, fury, thirst unquenched. Everything became a battle, and every battle became a loss with no end in sight.

Tree must have thought they were a myth when they are young, but now they were real, and she was going to become one.

“The evidence has not changed,” The Executioner said.

“This has been the fifth time, it has not,” Tree replied.

Fifth time? Of course, why would they make her read the only evidence she had multiple times if only to prolong the trial? Prolong the trial like a slow form of mental torture. First to trick her but four times more to hurt her.

“Shall we have you repent again?”

“Let it stop. No… let it stop!” Tree shook her head, “I have no need to continue… I’ll stop talking…”

The clattering of the Lead Maidens loudened; the Executioner laughed under their breath.

“Stop? What if we need more repentance? Readdress your sins for one last time?”

“One more time?”

“We will force it from you otherwise,” the Executioner lowed their head, “We have enough time, Kaliber will make sure of that.”

“I-I-I I I’m sorry but th-th th…”

“Spit it out!”

“This might be the last time we die together. It’s better for me to give this burden to another forged in my design. I’d rather not see you bleed out like that again… I’d I’d I’d…” Tree struggled to get out of the words. With every nervous word she looked at me. She could no longer focus on her own execution. Maybe now she was reminded of her regrets.

“…and?”

“I can’t save you! I can’t save you! I have to go through with this. I can’t! I want to try and erase myself. I hope that you don’t have the emotional capacity to remember me. The capacity to -”

“You know what, that’s enough!”

“You’re letting me go?”

“We’re letting you go.”

The Lead Maidens grew louder.

The other observers started humming a high-pitched rhythm as the Executioner descended and placed their small hands over Tree, she was shivering, but as the hand dropped onto the top of her slug, she stopped.

The Lead Maidens ceased their metallic clamouring, Tree lowered her head to the point of falling down onto the gungeon floor. Although her shaking had stopped, I could hear her tears muffled against the stonework as she started crying again.

“Will, we not need the guillotine today?”

Tree made no response.

“Look at that, you were so calm reading off the script earlier now look at you! This will be our mercy.”

The observers started to surround the helpless body and glared onto it.

“We will have no need for the Lead Maidens today, please, just the purest use of ammomancy will be enough to silence them,” the Executioner said, as they looked down, “No need for the guillotine today, this one is already weak enough!”

I had never witnessed a Shotgun Kin use ammomancy before, not in this way, a way of pure aggression. The onlookers with their eyes still closed, they must have done this so many times before because they had not even flinched. The chain was a deep sparkling red, it was not spectacular by gungeon standards, but it was still unlike what I had seen before. It was so fluid in its movements that I nearly missed when the slug was severed from the casing. There was a load of gunpowder mixed with sticky red blood which left a mess of deep red slurry onto the ground. It continued to spill until it came to a sudden halt a few seconds later.

“Grab the sheet, Web, and the others, take the body to the Hollow,” The Executioner said.

Two of the onlookers, both of them Red Shotgun Kin draped a white sheet over the body before picking it up. The other kin who had observed the trial departed, scurrying into the surrounding rooms.

I ran back into the room I had come from, lucky to have not been seen participating in the final erasure the same way the rest of them did.

Still keeping hold of both the revolver and the spell sheet in my hand, I returned to where I was last standing to find that neither Leaf nor the Shotgun Kin had moved during the entire length of I was caught up in the trial. I forced a tear back into my eye and looked at Leaf, hiding how I had been shaken.

I unrolled the spell sheet if that was what the magic in the second chamber looked like then what would this do on the fourth floor?

Leaf was no longer frowning, I offered them the sheet and sighed heavily.

“Are they gone now?” they asked.

“Yeah… they’re gone now…” I said, eyes lowered.


	6. A Surprising Encounter

The Beholster was a surprisingly reasonable guy. The gungeoneers speak of the horrifying beast, all red with one eye. How the stare was unbearable! There was no doubt he had killed hundreds of gungeoneers but so had all of us. It was mostly no indication as to our character. The Beholster was fair to his own kind, as far as we were aware and no strange tales of Bullet Kin misadventures or tales which ended in unfortunate or terrifying circumstances. The dark and gruesome stories were only spoken from the mouths of frustrated and bedraggled gungeoneers, he was of no threat to us. 

He was instead kind of a ‘parental’ figure even, a creator of sorts on top of that. He had come to the gungeon with his created few at a time unknown to most, if not all of us, was there even a time before he was around? He had minions or maybe what I would call ‘children’ called ‘Beadie’ who he was able to create himself whenever at the full extent of his power. Nobody knew how he did it, the strong ability of his dreams or the beam of his eye were supposed theories, both with evidence. 

The Beadie living inside the area of the Gungeon Proper had wailed because they had missed him; however, those summoned by him would almost inevitably see him wither and die. No matter how many times it happened, it caused them to cry in such endless streams. Not that the gungeoneers cared, no room for sympathy, they would just up and shoot them and then run down to the next floor. They would mutter ‘good riddance’ on their lips, unprepared for what our dead, our truly erased would do to them as they descended.

I thought I had regained my composure as Leaf and I entered into the Boss’s room. It felt strange, if the Gorgun or Ammoconda was behind that door, then there was far more risk involved, perhaps even a kind of hopeless fight that would send us back to the keep if we were lucky. Yet, there was much less preparation, no need to lie, just readiness to enter that charged, mindless state of firing to protect our lives.

I had shoved most of the tears which were ready to pour from my eyes back into their tear ducts and had managed to mind my rage and frustration, not taking it out at the other kin in the hallways. Although the others were probably far more acquainted with the ludicrous and almost tragic systems of execution that went on in the second chamber. I had felt ready to charge at them at any moment, and they were just so calm. 

They were stronger than me, and I hated it. 

Nevertheless, the hiding of my shock didn’t pass the Beholster, he must have noticed something in me that was familiar. The gungeoneers barely showed any of their sorrow when it came to fighting the beasts that lurked within its depths. My emotions must have reminded him of his own minions and thus, triggered a kind of response in him. 

We weren’t inside his room for long, such a simple place. The flooring not changed from the disgusting conventional flooring of the Gungeon Proper, nothing on the walls, the only thing of mention was perhaps the pits which no doubt served as traps which stood in all four corners of the room. Surely a magnificent creature of scarlet would prefer more royal quarters or at least something to keep their mind entertained, but there was nothing. Was he trapped in this tiny little room that served no function? It seemed to be more of a punishment than being stuck in a single place - more of a prison than anything else inside the Gungeon Proper so far. 

The Beholster had only a few words for us, they were fleeting, but they calmed me. Especially after the expectation that we might have had to have a shoot-off against an accursed Gunwitch who turned kin like us to stone with total ease. 

The Beholster noted to us that the way down was behind him and that he’ll keep an eye out if ever the execution victim, would return as a Hollowpoint. I withheld Tree’s name to save at least some of Leaf’s feelings, the last thing I needed was their anxiety getting any worse. It had been getting that way after I had mentioned the dark details of the execution itself. 

We nodded and thanked him, the Beholster with his deep, off-putting voice told me, “Do not worry,” I took his word for it. I didn’t want to worry. I wanted to uphold that as long as I could. Not out of duty to him, to the gungeon, to the Bullet Kin code of honour, but to my role and what laid ahead of me. This spell, this summoning, a conversation with my dear goddess, it’s how I needed to be if I were to survive through this.

We headed down what seemed to be the exact same set of stairs as before. Dull, dimly lit narrow pathway downwards. We slowly made our way down watching every tiny step as we did the last time. I would hate to imagine what falling down this staircase would even be like – would be a pain worse than death; that’s for sure. 

As we were descending, we heard a reverberating ‘click’ that banged against the walls, which made the few lanterns placed on the walls flicker in a sign of reactive aggression. I looked back at Leaf, who was behind me. They looked noticeably started, their little pinprick eyes larger than they often were. Was it the sound that had shaken them, or were they still trying to fill in the empty gaps in the execution scene I had left them?

“Did you hear that, Leaf?”

They blinked before humming, “Heard it? I felt it! I nearly tripped.”

I squinted at them, felt it? Was it really that strong? Their expression didn’t change, indicating that they were indeed concerned. 

The sound was coming from below us. We couldn’t go back up, going back up meant risking being stuck there or aimlessly wandering wasting needless amount of time – which would inevitably end up with us being stuck anyway. We had to keep going. 

We both breathed a sigh of relief as we got to the Third Chamber. The stinging smell of acid flowed around us. It clung to the roof of my mouth and made me cough. Leaf looked over to me as I threw my body over the edge where the elevator stood. They patted the side of my shell, afraid of me throwing up. Luckily, there was nothing inside of me that could anyway. 

I couldn’t remember the last time that I actually ate something. It’s not that Bullet Kin don’t need to eat; we do, but it must have been so many timelines ago since I actually had anything. Let alone a meal with any of the kin who lived in the keep. 

I missed the taste of cheese. Food inside the gungeon is magically conjured. The smell of it ran through the Keep of the Lead Lord as was the whims of those that lived there. Bullet Kin have a taste for cheese. I had no idea where the concept of cheese actually comes from just that Bullet Kin, myself included, enjoyed eating it. I think the conjured food had a source somewhere outside of this place, Bullet Kin didn’t make their own cuisine like chefs, we had no time for that. 

“Hey, Spire, Spire…?” Leaf pat me to make sure that didn’t actually vomit. 

I lifted myself back to standing and gagged, “Yes, I am fine, fine…”

Their eyes were still nervously searching around as if whatever had made that noise was down here with us. 

“What was it that made you bawl like that?” Leaf asked.

“Can’t you smell it?”

“Smell, what? The acid? A little?”

“Yes, that thing!” 

“Is it really bothering you that much?” 

I coughed again but nowhere near enough to make me sick, “It is! How do you just ignore it like that?” 

“It’s not that much to bother, we should keep going.”

I rubbed my eyes which felt as if they were slowly burning, “Yeah, yeah, let’s keep going.”

There wasn’t that sound anymore, and nothing was at least directly below us. There was the possibility it was just Cannonbalrog, but something in the ‘click’ that it had produced had felt familiar in a way that Cannonbalrog wouldn’t have. We had to avoid it, or keep looking, which might have ended up becoming the same thing. 

Black Powder Mines, an even more detestable place than the Gungeon Proper before it. The Gungeon Proper at least had the courtesy not to smell horrific and have actual paving on its floor – The Black Powder Mines seemed if it was run by anarchy, flows of deep yellow acid rivers flowed between the rooms. The Bullet Kin who worked down here had to wear hard hats or helmets to protect themselves from the Gungeon’s own resources. Yes, people did die here, gungeoneers were erased here and in probably far vaster numbers than in the keep. I was beginning to see why here the very geography of the place was against you. 

We found a place where the lashing acid waterways were the rule. There was only a series of platforms between us and the other side. Leaf and I skipped between the empty platforms with a certain grace almost to prevent ourselves from falling into the yellow liquid below us.

“Spire, you really watched someone become a Spent, huh?” Leaf asked, a distant tone in their voice. 

“Yes?”

“T-they’re not so mythical after all then?” they asked, with a stutter. 

“Mythical, huh? Did either of us ever see it that way?”

Their voice grew low and solemn, it started shaking, “No but I kinda liked seeing it that way, as if they were nothing but a dream or… didn’t you want to keep seeing them that way when you saw them too, Spire?”

They paused as I started my own jump towards the next platform ahead of me.

“Leaf, move!” I yelled as they looked to be going into a trance-like state.

I jumped, almost tripping them up but causing their left foot to be over the edge, they set out an ear-piercing scream as they could only just steady themselves back onto the same platform I was on. There was now two of us sharing the same tiny platform and one red door ahead of us. 

“So, uh which of us it to jump first?”

Leaf was still trapped in their memories. It was as if I had triggered something at the back of their mind that all the various timelines had buried or tried to destroy. 

‘ _When you saw them too’._

Those memories wherever they were trapped inside them were likely trapped inside of me as well. 

“Leaf?” I tried to question them.

They were staring ahead at the door the dulled gold-coloured hinges perfectly in frame from where they were standing. 

“Eh, wait we’re in the mines, aren’t we?” 

“We are… where did you think that we were?”

Leaf drew away from me, their eyes searching their environment far more carefully than before, “It’s no matter, it’s no matter, we should keep going!” 

“Hmph, do you want me to go ahead?” I pointed toward the frames of the doors again. 

“Yeah, yes, I’ll join you in a bit, let me think.”

I looked away from Leaf, trying to give them enough space so that my jump didn’t cause them to get knocked back or startle them. 

I jumped and swiftly landed upon the largest platform on the other side of the room. I leant my hand on the door. The old wood keeping it together knocked loudly against the empty room, causing an echo. 

“Leaf, you can come across now, Leaf?”

“Ah… yes, I can…” their voice was eerie. I would have guessed that they were worried about something again, but they weren’t caught up in a sudden emotional release like the time we stood at the Executioner’s door. When I had told them the details, they had seemed upset in a much more expressive way than this, they were elsewhere as if trying to ignore it. 

“Leaf. We need to keep going, both of us!”

I started walking backward towards the door, it creaked again, the echo bouncing around the room. 

“Leaf?”

“Gah! Who’s that?! I thought you creatures couldn’t get into here, what are you - ” a voice sounded out of nowhere.

“Leaf, get down here! Now! Please!” I demanded. 

I hoped that idiot wasn’t contemplating throwing themselves into the pit of acid below as a kind of psychotic defiance. 

“Wait, you… bullet things, you can talk? You can talk?”

That voice, it boomed, a clear deep pitch it didn’t sound like any member of the gundead. They seemed like the furthest thing from one of us that it could be. 

I turned around ever so carefully, keeping one of my tiny hands on the door, the same one still forced to hold the ammomancy spell and my stupid revolver. The door being open provided me with an easy escape and desperate back up from Leaf if I needed to defend myself against whatever was there. 

I was surprised as to what I saw when the entity fully entered my view. A suit of red armour, two white with tiny pupils in the centre. Very little of the rest of the being could be seen through the red plates which covered their whole body. They were quite a bit taller than me, at least a foot, and maybe closer to two foot taller than Leaf. I wasn’t sure they were human until I had remembered the last time I saw them – clearly, this was Blockner, a gungeoneer.

I felt myself throw up in my mouth, what is a gungeoneer doing here? They shouldn’t be here! If they were then the doors should be down, Leaf and I should be back in the keep sorting through all those stupid books again. Did we cheat the time limit? Did we cheat the gungeon? Why wasn’t Blockner shooting at me? He was just staring at my trembling expression without doing anything. 

“Y-Yes, we can talk, we talk…”

“You know English too; I can understand you perfectly.”

“Yes, uh, we do, the national language of the Hegemony of Man, based on one of your prior worlds is that correct?”

“How in the hell do you know that?!” the Legungoneer snapped. 

“We, uh, know a lot more about human culture than you would expect,” I smiled at him nervously, still shocked that he hadn’t tried to kill me. 

Then again, I didn’t feel that strange bloodlust that caused me to lose all control either. I wasn’t filled with the insane pressure that directed me into protecting the gun that could kill the past with all of my life force. Who knew a human gungeoneers and a Bullet Kin could stand here talking with neither of them lying dead. 

“You know a lot, huh? How come? I thought you had the intelligence of pets,”

“Uh,” I backed away from his slightly, “So many human gungeoneers have come here, and many of them have just gotten, well, stuck, you know? Naturally, you would learn the patterns of your enemies after being around them so long. You think that humanity has picked up any of the gundead’s culture yet?” I laughed nervously, but Blockner seemed deeply unimpressed.

“Wait, what are you trying to tell me?”

“N-Nothing, it’s nothing…”

Blockner narrowed his eyes, “Say… since you seem open to discussion, do you have a key to open this chest by any chance?” he gestured toward a bulky green chest which sat in the middle of a brightly lit room. Another treasure of the gungeon which we were told never to touch if we did not want to incur Kaliber’s wrath. The gungeoneers saw these as easy pickings to be toyed and played with – no surprise really. 

“Uh, key, no, why would I have a key? We’re forbidden from opening those,” I pointed behind him towards the chest. 

“Huh, oh well, that’s kind of a shame” Blockner pointed what looked to be some agglomeration of knotted balloons tied together to look perfectly like a gun, I jumped back.

Blockner froze and then, didn’t fire, but spoke again, “Say, since you’re here, do you think that you could help me with another thing, you seem willing and surprisingly not eager to die? What do you think?”

“This is an unusual set of circumstances, I guess I could, so long as it is something small?”

I stared at him, he put his gun down. I wanted to keep on this mission for as long as possible. I hoped that whatever a freaking gungeoneer would request of us wouldn’t be so audacious to upset Kaliber or the Lich, it wasn’t as if we were going to use swords. 

“I’m looking for a friend.”

“A…?”

“Spire, you’re there!” before I finished my sentence, Leaf ran and crashed into me.


	7. Our Triumph, Their Failure

“What!” Leaf snapped, “That’s a gungeoneer!” 

“Yes, one that gave us an offer,” I said, pushing them to the side so they wouldn’t interfere, “and we are going to fulfil it, right?” 

I smiled awkwardly looking back at both Blockner and Leaf. I felt like such a deviant doing this, but it seemed promising that it would help keep this trip a success, if both the gungeoneer and us could survive this floor unharmed then we would easily get to the Hollow – our task would be complete. A temporary alliance of discomfort for personal success. 

“Fulfil what? That’s still a gungeoneer?!” Leaf questioned.

“Yes, and we’re going to help them.”

“Wow, two of you speaking English I guess the first one wasn’t a fluke, eh? I’ll try to remember that next time I’m slaughtering you in your hundreds,” Blockner smirked. 

“Can you not rub that in?” Leaf said.

“Yes, uh, where are we going to find this friend of yours then, Blockner?” I asked.

_Friend._ I thought gungeoneers never came down as pairs. There wasn’t a rule against it, but two gungeoneers at once, that was rare. Undoubtedly one of them would feel put-out or ignored as one did all the murder and the other could barely get a kill in. 

“Yes, my friend, they went uh, missing, they got themselves stuck somewhere while riding around on the mine carts, plus, I think he has a key. I’m not sure if I can ride those carts myself, but you must know the way around, surely, being Bullet Kin and all,” Blockner’s had an uneasy tone. 

“Us, the mine carts?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you guys! You love riding on those things, takes forever to gun ya’ down when you are zipping around on ’em! So, can you help?”

“Yes,” I said without a moment’s hesitance. I had never ridden a mine cart before in my entire existence. 

“That’s good, I can find the room where he got himself into, I’ve cleared them, so you won’t need to explain to your bullet friends what you’re doing, sound alright?”

“Yes, that sounds great!” I smiled in faux enthusiasm.

“Wait, what? But I can’t-” Leaf spoke up behind me, I pushed them back even further.

“Nonsense, Leaf, we can do anything, right?” 

“Us, anything?” 

“Yes, us, anything!” 

Leaf paused; I think whatever memory was sparked inside of them had gone back to being part of their clockwork brain. They were back to thinking in a normal and somewhat rational way, “Well, we have done a lot this lifetime haven’t we, I think we could handle it, couldn’t we.”

“That’s the bright fighting talk I like to see!” I grinned at them, for real this time.

“Just show us both where we need to go, and we’ll follow your lead, Blockner.”

“Okay,” Blockner shoved past us in a way that looked painful to him. The metal of our bodies sometimes were too hard to the touch for the fleshy gungeoneers, and we would leave them with wounds if they simply touched us. Blockner seemed unharmed though, probably all of that armour he was wearing. I actually thought using shields was quite a clever concept for defensive tactics. Despite that, it was Manny who was much more successful and likely to reach the lower gungeon reaches. If I was Blockner that would have made me frustrated. 

-

We followed this strange gungeoneer without so much as a betrayal from either of us, toward a large, mostly empty room. There was only a small amount of platform to even stand on. The smell was stagnant and sweet yet somehow, still burning. The sides of the room were littered with bones in piles all across the room—uncleaned, hollow, empty skulls of what I could assume to be mostly human bones. 

Actual. Erased. Gungeoneers. 

Gungeoneers that now ceased to exist, the bones that once belonged to them formed in all corners of the room like carelessly tossed together gravestones, a false graveyard. Spread so nonchalantly, as I thought, just like Tree was going to be. 

_And their bodies were here._

What was wrong with this pit? What did it make so many give up the fight or upset Kaliber so drastically? It didn’t look like any of the gundead had entered the room either. There were no marks made on the flooring that looked like mine. It was wrong for us to be here.

“So, what are you waiting for? Use the mine carts and get to the other side, he stranded himself over there!” Blockner gestured his stone gauntlet of an arm to a view of so many little mine carts littered across an empty ditch. There was a single track, a circle that wrapped around the closest section of the pit. Yet, all of the other minecarts seemed to float in mid-air. Either the track was too dark to see, or there was some form of gungeon magic that was keeping those mine carts floating.

“Uh,” I stepped forward, getting in the first mine cart that was attached to the visible track. Before moving it, I handed to spell and my gun to Leaf who was blankly staring at me as I went through with this stupid act. 

It moved at a dazzling speed but not an overbearing one. Leaf waited on the other side. They looked around at the symbols of permeant death that had surrounded them, a look of concern on their face. I didn’t think that Leaf would have the guts to go mine cart jumping, I didn’t blame them, in fact, I wanted them to wait. Blockner was a few meters away from Leaf, also on the platform, he was grinning, happy that I was taking this ridiculous risk for him. 

The first cart was easy enough to control, the second demanded a leap of faith into darkness. The cart itself wobbled as I attempted to grind it to a halt. No! This needed to be just close enough to reach, I couldn’t leap like this. 

I pulled myself forward, trying to use the mine cart itself like an extension of my body, it wavered around but when I steadied myself, so did the cart. It was still, and I jumped over the side of the cart and into the next one. 

I was safely in the cart to be found that I had landed on my side. I struggled around for a bit, grabbing onto the edge and sliding back and forth. I rolled over enough so that I way lying on my back. My tiny little hands and feet grasping onto the bottom of the metal cart. I was weak, all of us were. I had to have enough determination: determination not be stuck dying here. I had to do this. _I knew I could do this._

I made a squeaky cry as I pushed this hapless shell upward to grip the metal outline of the mine cart and grabbed onto the rimmed sides with my weak hands. I was up, Blockner was grinning even more. I gave him the most serious look I could muster with a face like mine.

Pushing ahead, the track was indeed there – just dyed a deep black colour. I had to sustain speed, reasonable speed to leap between the carts. It was much easier than it looked, I sensed that there was actually no deep void waiting for me at the bottom.

As I reached the third card, only two more to go, I saw the other gungeoneer who was stranded on this dark maze, that was Manny, as I should have expected. An old-looking human guy, unremarkable in drab clothing. _Was this really the guy that was giving the gungeon all this trouble?_

His eyebrows were low, and his gaze shifting. 

“No, wait, I’m here to help, trust me!” I shouted as I approached him, least I end up being shot by him after all this effort.

He noticed me and seemed shocked, about to open his mouth, I butted in, “Yes, I can talk, but I don’t have time to talk, Blockner is waiting for you!”

“Blockner? He questioned.

“Your uh, friend, yes?” I saw the next cart, the fourth cart, ahead of me and dramatically leapt into it, only one more to go now. My speed was rapidly picking up as was my heartbeat. 

“Yes, Blockner, he’s here too, I brought something for us…” 

If they were friends, then why did he keep looking away when I mentioned his name?

The final cart, Kaliber, this speed was dizzying. _Just remember, a part of your body, right?_ Me and the mine cart were both metal, throwaway metal. With a bounce, the next cart was just within reach. I screamed a little as I reached, still upright. I had really learnt to handle these. As the track slowed, reaching the final platform, Manny was waiting for me. Uneasy. He was holding a large brown bag. I thought gungeoneers had some kind of space where they could hide stuff and not carry it? But Manny had this bag under his arm, and it was clearly heavy, why keep a hold of it like that? 

“Here, get in, I won’t hurt you, promise,” I did one of those fake smiles again.

“Huh, so you all talk then, and I can understand you?”

“Yes, yes, but that’s not important; besides, I’ve already had to sit through this conversation today, just get in unless you want to stay stranded.”

He away from me, I guess he disliked my sudden change in tone? 

“Well, I suppose I don’t, alright, I’ll come with you, strange uh, Bullet person,” he tried to laugh, but painfully. 

“Say, uh, Manny, isn’t it?”

“You know my name? Wait, how do you know my name?”

“Know your name, we’ve been tracking you, and your friend too.”

“You mean you don’t, or did you…?”

“Us? Die? Yes. Cease to exist, No. The Gun that Can Kill the Past works on us too, most of the time. Dying and erasure, those are two different things, you’ve been here so many times. I’ve counted at least over 150, I think you should understand that by now.”

The gungeoneers eyes widened with complete disbelief. I bet he was desperate to get out of the mine cart this instant. The idea of someone tracking the details of your death at every instance was probably morbid to this human. That and the reality of the fact that we, the very thing that served to be killed in this place, we would come back and attempt to recover the memory of when those deaths happened? What lunacy, I wondered what was going through his head right now. 

“Me. understand you…”

“Yes, I have survived, if that’s how you want to phrase it. I have a voice, and awareness too, I’ve mimicked some of your culture actually, the gungeon isn’t as alien as you think it is. You could even say that I’m not all that alien – huh – imagine that!” 

Manny was backing away slowly. He clearly did not enjoy what I was telling him. Manny – who had given all of us a sense of terror when he entered, the terror he was, had become a little scared of just me. I supposed gungeoneers didn’t think much, especially the skilled ones. Maybe it was their inability to think, to shut the carnage off that made them so competent. They might have wanted to change the past for good reasons, but their path of getting there had to be exclusively cold-blooded.

He backed away from me as far as he could, but he knew he couldn’t get away from me, not yet. I took the opportunity to ask him a few more questions. 

“Say, Manny, what’s that you are carrying like that anyway?” 

“Well, it’s Arcane Gunpowder,” he was clearly uncomfortable with the question but answered out of my current inescapable presence. 

I had heard of that object before, Arcane Gunpowder, supposedly a source of the gundead’s creation, magical, created and saved for the precious Lich. Such crucial material. I proceeded to question him further. 

“Arcane Gunpowder?”

“Well, that’s what the Blacksmith said I needed to get for her, for the Bullet that Can Kill the Past, you see?”

“The… you…?!” 

A sudden wave of anger hit me. If this gungeoneer was this close to his goal, then it meant that we were failing. Irrational anger at that, I should know that this was all pointless – I do know that this is all pointless. We fight for our potential to be erased, and for what? Nothing of course, not if the gungeoneers didn’t give in and some of them were bound to not give in. Regardless of how many of their own deaths they had to see. The rage inside me boiling was primal, likely a part of my design. This wasn’t supposed to happen. My body responded to that. I was aware of its growing fiery warmth. 

“Me what? Is something wrong?”

“You… Must be close…” my voice was harsh but likely in no way intimidating.

“Oh, close, yes, I am, it’s one reason why I started helping out Blockner! He really is quite stuck you know so I thought I’d give him some advice! But now I’m starting to think that maybe I shouldn’t have come down with him, oh…”

Well, it was generally unheard of that gungeoneers would come down two at a time. I guess Manny had regrets about Blockner’s interferences. 

I stared and blinked, still mad at him but less so than I would have expected to be. Together we awkwardly moved between each of the mine carts. I had many opportunities to swipe the bag of Arcane gunpowder from him and throw it over the edge below but resisted. The more uneasy that he grew, the more began to feel kind of sorry for him, or at least, no longer mad at him for trespassing. It was like he really regretted whatever he was going through. Either bringing Blockner with him or whatever I had told him had caught a grip on his mind, and he was forced to rethink his actions. Unlike the gundead, the gungeoneers still had options to fix their regrets. 

The mine carts eventually came to a screeching halt. We both looked to find ourselves finally back to the other side of the platform. Leaf had lifted the base of their stubby little leg out to stop the mine cart. They looked ahead at us, blankly, “Well, you gonna get out or something?” 

We both slowly got out of the cart. I rubbed the side of my casing, there was some kind of ringing in my slug from being so caught in that tiny box with no breathing room. Otherwise, it could have been some inbuilt response to being so close to a gungeoneer for so long without some exchange of gunfire. 

“Manny, you came back!” Blockner said softly just behind us.

“Oh, yes, I fetched this for you, now we can both bring this the forge, can’t we?” 

“With some luck,” Blockner bared his teeth at his friend, “Let’s get going, just leave those Bullet Kin, they don’t seem to be blocking the exit for some reason.”

Blockner nodded at us like a silent sign of thanks. Manny followed after him, still carrying that heavy-looking bag with the supposedly legendary material inside of it. 

Leaf and I stood waiting, they were almost out the door went Leaf turned to me with their dull eyes and spoke, “Well, what did you say to the human?”

“Me, say to them?” 

“Did you go on one of those rants again, is it because you didn’t have your revolver?” Leaf twirled the gun of mine around in their hand while giggling.

“Hey! So, what if I did?”

“You always do that when you get a chance to meet the new Bullet Kin, and you just did it to this gungeoneer, admit it!”

“Ugh, give me that gun back!” I swiped it out of their hand, along with the little spell and ran towards the door.

“Hell, Spire, where are you going?” 

I continued running towards the door, “Following them.”

“If you’re gonna follow them at least wait for me!” Leaf started to run as well. 

As we peered out of the exit, we saw that the two gungeoneers were walking briskly the way they had just come back. They were just loud enough so that we could hear their echoes across the room, _“So, uh, Manny, you still have that key, right?”_

_“I think so, yep, just one key on me.”_

We kept running as fast we could with our tiny bodies which barely allowed for it. Both of the humans arrived again at the room where I had seen the green chest before, they had both gone inside and started discussing something. Having bounded off of all these tiles so many times already, it wasn’t certainly as stressful as last. Leaf and I did so with swiftness.

We huddled just outside the door but just out of view. 

_“You really want to be keeping this item, Blockner… Blockner!”_

We heard something like metal rattling, curiosity refusing to leave me; I peered in, and Leaf followed suit. 

Blockner was wrestling with Manny pushing him down so that his head was slammed into the chest. 

“Blockner, what!”

“Shut up! Shut up!”

Blockner now held Manny’s head in a tight grasp and was strong enough to pull his whole body downward until he was inside the chest fully. Neither of us could see anything of Manny anymore.

“How dare… what do you think you’re…”

“You’ve taken everything from me, Manny, I’ve had enough of this, and I’ve had enough of you! I will make it, so my defence techniques are useful in this damned place!”

“Huh, he’s awfully protective of his fancy shield armour, of all things he wants to protect that but why would…” Leaf whispered, I shushed them and kept watching.

“But I thought…”

“No! I don’t care, Manny, I want you gone! This has to do it…this has to…” Blockner huffed as the lid of the chest came down with a heavy thud. Manny screamed on the inside and started banging. Blockner punched the chest down with his gauntlet, which caused Manny’s banging to stop.

“Well, that’s done it. I’ll bring this down to the breach again and keep it there. Find a nice quiet place for the body to rot away from where the past killer can reach. Away from the eyes in this, please. No gundead to stop you, eh Manny? I bet you didn’t think you’d die like this?” 

Blockner smiled at the box containing the corpse of his friend, “Poor Manny, you really deserved that reconciliation. I thought so anyway until you outdid me.” 

The box seemed to disappear, stashed in the Gungeoneers hidden place of objects. The bag of gunpowder laid at the corner of the room, on its side, it was close to tipping over. Blockner turned around. Leaf and I ducked down, made ourselves shrink even more. Out of view. As silent as possible. Blockner passed by us, not noticing the Bullet Kin behind the door. How would he get to the breach again from here without dying? Not our issues, it meant we didn’t have to care about the resets. 

“His plan… that crazy man,” Leaf was trembling again, “Will it really work?” 

“Oh, don’t feel bad for the stupid gungeoneer,” I said, “I have no idea, but if it does, we’ll be down a menace.”

“Down a menace, yeah… but I’d still hate to go that way, I’d had to have a friend be forced to erase me permanently so they could protect some pet ideal they had!” 

“Well, that’s just gungeoneer problems isn’t it? Some of them come in for petty reasons like they spilt juice on the sofa or something, once they’ve lost what they’ve been striving for, then they got to find whatever they can to cling onto, pointless or not.”

“Something to cling onto, like a friend?”

We looked at each other, Leaf smiled briefly before going back to a neutral expression, they were still shaking a little.

“Say, Leaf, do you think that noise… it was actually the walls shifting?”

“You know, I think so…”

“So that makes it…”

“317, it should be 317.”

“317 lifetimes, and we were saved from death in just one of them.”


	8. The Price of Memory

I may have just witnessed the ending of existence for one of our enemies, yet I had no feelings inside of me - the burning and the profound detachment I had felt when the door fell down was like a distant memory. Only the tiniest fragment of that feeling had returned when the gungeoneer had mentioned succeeding, even now that was gone. The death of Tree was still far more prominent in my mind despite how badly I felt the need to push it out, but the gungeoneer was just a passing observation.

We were close now, the Hollow was in our reach as were the tools we needed to perform the ritual. The spell, of life, death, reincarnation, more of what our goddess stood for rather than simple gunfire.

Treadnaught was here, a Bullet Kin, as small as we were in a great tank that we had adapted for our own needs. She was surrounded by pillars constructed of material just enough for her and her comrades to destroy if they got in her way. The smell of acid which was strong in all the other parts of the mines, had faded here. The space was somewhat open but not cramped, and it had made the room one of the more comfortable of the Black Powder Mines.

“Oh hey, it’s rare to see non-Tankers in these parts, you came to here about how we destroyed the Hegemony of Man? I was there, ya know? I deserve some special credit too, it’s why I got the tank in the end you see, isn’t it majestic? Are you in awe? Tell me if ya are in awe?” Treadnaught glared at the both of us, suspecting that neither of us was in awe like she thought we were supposed to be.

“I don’t know about awe or anything, but that story does sound interesting, Treadnaught, you can go ahead and tell it to us!” Leaf said, smiling at her.

At some point, the Hegemony of Man – a large intergalactic federation connecting all the solar systems owned by humanity and some of their allies had come to attempt an occupation the gungeon. From what I understood of the outside, the gungeon was rumoured to be a place where people would frequently go missing. The connection to the gungeon and humanity itself seemed to go back hundreds of years, but with the elongated time frames in the gungeon, it could have been approaching a million years by now! Or it at least, seemed that way.

Naturally, the Hegemony of Man was highly suspicious of a place where so many of their own could vanish out of nowhere. Their suspicions must have also heightened when the Blobulons had made a home for themselves here. Especially after humanity had otherwise annihilated their civilisation. The ability to investigate it would be one thing, the ability to take it over and control it from the inside? Quite another, but the Hegemony of Man was no stranger to having blood on their hands and a passion for domination.

“The Hegemony of Man approached us with such, fight! They had so many weapons we had never laid eyes on before, alien weapons. It was as terrifying as it was exciting! Then again, who would have thought that this entire space empire would fall but in the third chamber, not even reaching the bottom!”

“Even if single gungeoneers reach the bottom? Why didn’t they keep trying?”

“We don’t know for sure. Maybe they couldn’t stand the losses, maybe they gave up as they saw too many of their men dying alongside them, maybe they had started to become scared of our own lack of fear and very nature, whatever it was, they stopped. They abandoned their weapons and fled.”

“All of them?” I questioned.

“Well, it couldn’t have been all of them. The lucky ones fled, no doubt some of them rotted and crushed in the cycle here,” Treadnaught shrugged, a tiny smirk appearing on Treadnaught’s face.

“You seem pleased about that,” I said.

“Why wouldn’t I be. I see them wither and die oh so frequently! The both of ya are just regular Bullet Kin, you wouldn’t get it, but let me tell you what it’s like being considered a ‘boss’ here. Ya would so rarely see the gungeoneers give up the fight for real in a room of just Bullet Kin. I imagine you mostly see their face of triumph as you are gunned down, I get to see the opposite. I get to see the light in their eyes fade before me. I get to see them beg and plead to me personally. I get to wipe away some of the last hope that they hold. I don’t have to offer so much as an apology as I take from them the last thing keeping them alive. They cough up all their blood and fall to the floor, everything vanishing around them. I get the greatest opportunity of even the bosses here, I think, I kill them with their own weapons. I killed them with something that they once trusted. No doubt those mostly human gungeoneers were aware of their own weapon, so it’s like an extra shot in the back.”

“That’s uh, very empowering for you, yes?” Leaf said, tapping their feet on the floor in a kind of nervousness.

I didn’t say anything, but internally I did feel kind of proud of her. It was probably just the primitive part of my slug talking, the part that wanted to unconditionally protect her home, but that kind of intense bloodlust was something I must have deep down longed for. It could never disappear completely - a part of myself which was dormant. To destroy everything they had, emotional, physical, real, unreal until there was a husk left. Remove the very zenith of my distress with impunity.

Tree had wanted to disappear; she had wanted to become nothing. Yet, she had written a note, so she must have wanted someone to know before she was erased permanently. There was someone she cared about. That inner voice was desperate to make it, so the gungeoneers didn’t even have that. They needed to have nothing for me to be satisfied.

The suppression of this spark – was curious, was it because the environment around me had changed? Because I wouldn’t have had to have seen… Leaf die again?

“Empowered, maybe, I think a mixture of things helped with that, perhaps this was part of it, why, would this alone empower ya exactly?”

Leaf looked down, “I suppose I might do?”

A strange doubt, but then again, I had done an amazing job suppressing my inner belligerency this lifetime.

“Weren’t you telling the story about the occupation, Treadnaught?”

“Oh, yes, the occupation, I should continue. I don’t know how long it took, but soon the human soldiers left. Some of them must have also become those so-called legendary disappearances that they hoped not to replicate, but I do have something else to say about this.”

“You have something else? Like what?”

“The thing that, the news of our victory, it didn’t seem to reach very far. That is what I suspect anyway. Gungeoneers still come, nobody fears the gundead, and certainly, nobody fears us Bullet Kin.”

“Most still don’t remember our fight on the outside?”

“They know that humanity failed to take over the gungeon, but they don’t know why it happened or why they had failed so.”

“I suppose most of can’t get our voice into the world if we’re always stuck in here…” I told Treadnaught.

“Yeah, you’re right. I suppose we can enjoy crushing their dreams in here until then. Although I do get a sense of why we won against them. You might already know or get the sense of it, but I think it’s worth explaining anyway. Maybe it could empower ya too? Kinda like how it empowered me?”

“Fun? So, it’s not just simple bloodlust or rage?” I asked, knowing that we weren’t just malicious killers like the world around us seemed to see us. It was nice to be reminded of that. I was more than my inner voice, and so was Leaf and all of the kin who were stuck here.

“Of course not. It might not be something you think about at all. It’s kinda, hidden. Though. It will make perfect sense once I explain it,” Treadnaught’s voice grew calming, humble.

“How would you explain this?” I said, sceptical.

“You know when you think about all those timelines past, the sheer amount of them, you don’t remember them all do you? Whether the parts you forgot involve what you might have eaten, stuff you might have had to write down, discussions you might have had but along with all those things, the heat of battle, conflict fought, how you might have died, you have the ability to forget those too.”

“Well, yes, I’ve forgotten things before,”

“Heh, I’ve forgotten a few things on this one journey already,” Leaf looked down onto the ground, they were still tapping their feet.

“It’s not uncommon because we all do it, all us Bullet Kin. I started doing it less after our kind repurposed this tank and I have less fear than I used to and I’m glad I could. But ya are all on the front line, you don’t get the benefit of being me! You need a way to defend yourselves. Not physically, though, mentally. You can’t go through thousands of deaths and recall every single grizzly detail, that idea is out of the question, you have to make yourself sometimes, not at all present somehow, shield yourself from whatever horrors you might face.”

Leaf was still looking down sheepishly, “Wait, you forgot even non-combat related things, even important ones, uh, but why would we forget important ones?”

Treadnaught smiled. All the haughtiness and fury they once bared, faded, “It might be useful in combat, but it’s not useful everywhere, in fact, it’s rather the opposite, but I suppose you have realised that already. They’re troublesome, uncomfortable, aren’t they? They stop us from being so afraid of everything that they’ll almost stop us doing anything too. Even me, stuck here in this tank, in this identical room for seemingly forever loses track of why she’s here sometimes!”

“Losing track of why you’re here…”

“Yeah, just like that!”

_Lost track. Time frames which were disregarded by Kaliber. Time frames which were overlooked by us. Blank, empty moments._

_Utter chaos._

_Utter chaos of reality._

“I wonder what else I have lost track of, huh…lost track,” Leaf’s voice was fading, they looked at me with a frown, I leaned over to them and gave them a reassuring pat.

“It’s best not to try and think too much about it. It will only make it worse. You don’t want to remember too much of your pain, right? It’s for the best,” The pitch of Treadnaught’s voice increased.

“Pain is just part of being here, though?” Leaf continued the discussion.

“Too much pain for any one entity to handle that’s for sure! You know I was telling you a story about the Hegemony of Man’s occupation of the gungeon, right?”

“I thought you were until you started talking about pain,” their voice wobbled.

“Because it’s relevant to how we defeated them. See, humans are used to fighting other intergalactic empires, beings with their own freedom to act, mortal beings with an inherent sense of death. We don’t have either of that. We know we need to throw ourselves at the target, become sacrificial like it dosen’t matter and live to stand up again through the bloodshed. Our ability to forget our pain, it won’t help us become stable people or build a grand intergalactic society, but it will save us. It saved us through every temporary disaster, every temporary pain. It protected this place; it kept the Lich in control, and it will continue to do so.”

“We fought off humanity, some of the best soldiers in the universe because we could forget?”

“I used to be like you, I used to force myself to forget I was worth something or that I was there at all, but it’s the best thing we have – the only thing we have. Our secret weapon, an unknown curse,” her smile was wider than ever, uncomfortably wide.

“Uh, weapon?”

“Hey, you really think your awful aim with that gun is going to be? Kaliber might wipe some stuff away, but we do too. It’s not just Kaliber’s whims deciding who exists and who is erased. Parts of our lives, memories, dreams ebb and flow in just the same way and we can’t seem to have it any other way,” Treadnaught took off her tattered looking green helmet, “Look at me, getting all nostalgic to random Bullet Kin who happened to wander in, what else is there to do here, eh?”

“Thank you for the story, Treadnaught, we need to head over to the Hollow, but the chat was good…” I said.

“Yes! It gets pretty lonely in here, one downside to being locked in these ‘boss’ rooms!”

Before I started to walk away, Leaf piped up another question, “What you’re saying is… Treadnaught… that us fighting the whole human army and then single lone gungeoneer… it’s the same?”

“Well! For us it is. Fun fact, as far as I know, the outside world simply considers the attempted occupation a failure for humanity, their loss but I know, it was our victory, and now you know that too!”

“So, we can achieve victory here?”

“I like to see it that way! No matter how hard it gets, there is still something, however distant, worth fighting for!”

“Well, thank you, I’ll try and consider that next time I…”

“Excellent! See you again, maybe, unlikely but maybe!”

The whole of humanity. We didn’t have victory against any of the gungeoneers, not individually. But we could have a victory over the entirety of humanity. Who knew how many other star systems they had taken for themselves, in the name of justice, in the name of battle, but they could never take our home. We stopped them with the only way that we knew how, and it worked. We had stopped the universe’s most celebrated soldiers.

Yet, our one triumph was still hidden to all but our own people, and we didn’t matter, of course, we didn’t matter.

“Come with me, Leaf,” I said as I looked back at them.

Leaf was still looking with strange longing at Treadnaught who had retained her chipper mood. What was Leaf thinking of? Did they have memories of the occupation that happened ever so long ago? Did they just want to get in that tank for the power trip?

I grabbed onto the paper in my hand, it crumpled even further, but the jiggered edges rippling in my hand calmed my nerves.

“Leaf, we are leaving, now!”

“Uh, oh, yes, I’m coming, thank you so much again, Treadnaught, may you have dignity in death!”

“May you too have dignity in death, friend!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Treadnaught waving before looking back at her scuffed helmet and putting it on her head. The tank puffed smoke and made an awful rattling sound as it drove away, and we started heading towards the stairs.

“You know, Treadnaught was far friendlier than I expected? It’s almost… inspiring…” Leaf looked at me with their eyes glittering.

“Inspiring? Well, that is one way to put it.”

We were standing next to each other, waiting to descend to what would be one final time.

“I don’t know if she can keep going like that – knowing why she does such things, maybe I, we can too!”

“I can’t really agree with you.”

Treadnaught’s optimism came from a place of closure. She was lucky, unlike most of us, she had been able to change. She ended one part of her life, so she was able to reconcile with her old one in a place of recovery, clarity, power. A place unreachable for most gungeon denizens and most kin especially.

“You can’t?”

“We’ll never have what she has, best not to think about it.”

The light in Leaf’s eyes faded. They were taken back to reality.

I sighed and grabbed their hand, they shook but then looked at me with some of that same light in their eyes as they had before.

This was it; we were entering the place of endings: our resting places, the source of our unholy magics, the Hollow. We would do this together, we needed to do this together. I needed Leaf here for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Treadnaught is the tank, not the Bullet Kin'  
> Well, now the Bullet Kin who found the tank constructed her entire identity around that.   
> It's keeping her life together if poorly, stop judging her.


	9. Deep Blue, Black

Tattered rugs which had never been replaced. Freezing strands of icicles hanging from the ceiling and frozen pools of ice which scattered the ground. The air around us all sickly sweet, grasping, bitter. I shivered in the cold, my casing rattling at the sudden drop in temperature. My eyes adjusted to the dark blue light surrounding me, this was it, we were really here. 

I uncrumpled the bent-up spell sheet, the last time that I would do so. All the words within it were ruffled, and the edges were bent. Diagrams skewed, but at least it was legible. I could do this; we could do this. The spell could be figured out here with help with the one and only High Priest.

I had never met the High Priest, but those who were forced to work in the Hollow must have had some encounters with him. Was he friendly? Easily crossed? It didn’t matter, we only needed his help a little, and I could come up with ways to persuade him.

The cold chill was even more present as we travelled through the rooms. The quiet hums of those both fully alive and brought back from the dead filled the air with chanting. Remains were scattered, but others collected on large stone tables as if being prepared. It wasn’t just the finally finished corpses of the kin that were brought down here; some of the skulls and bones were far too large, too circular. They looked just like the permanently erased gungeoneer bodies inside of the Black Powder Mines. 

Gundead, Gungeoneers, Bullet Kin, Humans, I didn’t matter who you were if Kaliber decided that she was done with you, they brought you here. The coffins lined up against walls, left in the middle of rooms, bleak wooden coffins. I spent time looking at them when I passed them by. I looked at them and recalled how I would see those circles of gravestones in the Keep of the Lead Lord. The blades of perfectly cut grass surrounding them. Occasionally one of our Cardinals would be there, muttering prayers which I couldn’t recognise. I dared not to disturb them and didn’t even try to observe, but they were always peaceful, seemingly delicate. 

I was so glad that I never got to see them once the gungeoneers had ransacked them—all to try and obtain their distant prize. 

These coffins were a lot weaker and bared no names, nor did they have any Cardinals standing over them and providing prayers to their spirits. They were left there to block up pathways - a quick and easy method of storing bodies. 

As we passed through each of the rooms, my mind was on the lookout for the so-called ‘Spent’. The mindless, hungry, soulless, creatures, but there were none to be seen. It confused me, made me uncomfortable somehow. 

I must have still wanted to see Tree again if it was her destiny to be thrown down here to protect the Hollow in her lone senseless rage. I wanted to be lucky enough to be the one to talk her out of her rampage, to discuss with her a way to bring her senses back. But no amount of talking would bring back a Spent, missing both their slugs and their souls. There was no ‘inner person’ left no matter how badly I wanted there to be. 

At least so long as I could think about her, her memory would stay for this lifetime. The memory of her as a helpful, caring person - not just a body of a former criminal to be misused. 

I tried to hide the fact I was searching for her, searching for Tree. I would have suspected Leaf would have been actively looking for Spent after they had acted weirdly earlier. The contrary was true, they seemed to be in their element. Confidently navigating the Hollow as if they knew exactly where they were going. Navigating the corridors with more confidence than before.

Despite Leaf and I passing through relatively quietly, we had caught the attention of the citizens of the Hollow eventually, “Hey! Where are you going?”

A Bullet Kin in the corner was huffing and tapping his foot, “Well, where are you going, I need some help here.”

“Help?” I asked.

“Wait, you need help from us?” Leaf said.

“Well, I’d like someone since those Ammonmancers ran away, you seem to be here though, did they send you?”

I clenched my teeth, I couldn’t tell the Bullet Kin that we were from all the way up in the First Chamber. Bullet Kin barely travelled, and if we had to explain we were here to talk to the High Priest, we’d probably receive even more judgement.

I hesitated, “Yes, we’re here, what do you need us for?”

“Oh, well, I need to revive this body, we’ve taken the casing off so the skeleton should be easy to animate now.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. 

“Oh, you two just come over here and take a look.”

We walked up to the table where the Bullet Kin was looming over. They tapped the base of its stone finish so that a loud ping could be heard across the room. Leaf came up to the table first, and I followed.

“See, the spirit is still inside, you can tell by the glow in their eyes!”

On the table was the perfectly preserved Skeleton of another Bullet Kin. The whole thing. The skull, teeth, tiny hands which still floated, some of the magic of the gungeon still flowing through their bodies. The bones were clean, clear ivory. Whoever had removed the casing had done so with an amazing level of care. There was no blood or gunpowder which remained on it. It was as pristine as it could be. 

“The glow?” I wrenched looking at it. It wasn’t by definition, disgusting since so much attention had gone into the preservation of the body, yet I was repulsed. 

I knew of the dark ammomancy that happened in the lower layers of the gungeon, but I wasn’t ready to witness it in person. I had not realised I was not ready. I wanted to see Kailber but deeply hoped that I wouldn’t have to gut someone in order to do so. 

“Yes, the glow, there, can you see it Spire?” Leaf’s tiny orb hands poked into the sockets of the skeleton. I thought they would go so deep as they would place their fist inside of the empty eye socket, I winced but kept looking. As described by the strange Bullet Kin, there was a faint bluish-purple glow inside of the skull hovering like a light.

“Y-yes-yes?”

“We need to bring it back, we could do with more help around here,” The Bullet Kin sighed and rubbed his hands together. 

“Us, bring it back?”

“Well, yes, what’s that look for?”

Leaf looked down at the body, then back to the Bullet Kin, who was growing impatient, “Well, I think we could help out Spire!”

“Us, we could help out?”

“I mean, I don’t see why not?”

“What do you even mean Leaf?!”

“It’s not that hard to do, not liking wielding ammomancy in combat, you know?”

“Wielding… Wielding like the Executioner?” I thought back to that rancid death sentence. 

“Yeah, so what, you gonna help us?” the other Bullet Kin was holding one of Leaf’s hands, Leaf showed not a single sign of distress.

“I suppose that I can?” 

I still had no idea what I was supposed to do. 

“Well, get over here then, stop staring outside the gungeon.”

Leaf was drawing closer to the mysterious Bullet Kin and away from me. 

“Yes, sure...” 

“Then what are you waiting for? Grab my hand!”

I had no idea what this had to do with ammomancy. If I had read the spell right, there was nothing mentioned of holding hands in any way. I wobbled over toward the two of them who were starting to shut their eyes. The stranger from the Hollow was muttering something under his breath.  _ Was this really trustworthy? _ Leaf seemed to have no qualms about it, and they seemed to worry over the tiniest of things. 

“What are you waiting for, come on,” Leaf whispered.

We all held hands and stood in a circle around the table. The muttering reaching louder and louder levels, as it picked up in volume, Leaf started to follow along with it. Leaf’s voice was high pitched, even for a Bullet Kin. It was easy to tell the two voices of them apart, but both the Hollow denizen and Leaf themselves were in perfect sync with each other. The sounds they sounded like words I had never heard before. Muttering clangs of some kind that certainly could not be described as English. 

I wanted to try and follow along with them, shutting my eyes too, but I was lost. It felt as if it was something I shouldn’t be doing, but I needed to keep up appearances. I was terrified of them finding out that I didn’t belong here. I really did not belong in the Hollow. I did not belong in the bottom of the Gungeon. 

The strange words were hard to keep track of. I tried to figure them out, but I worked out for certain that it was a language that I did not understand.

_ Then what language was it? _

And it was something Leaf knew? How typical.

A language which sounded much more like clashing metal, noises, sounds that didn’t form words. 

I decided to open my eyes, and the skeletal remains were floating in the air with some kind of bright red light. Flying, some of the red light shone through its eyes. It wasn’t moving on its own, but rather the energy was forcing it to move like its soul was being made to awaken. 

I was trying my hardest, not shiver.  _ Why did this hurt so much to look at? _ It was just the nature of the gungeon, just the nature of my home.  _ Why was it twisting me on the inside? _ This unnatural rendition of…

The body slammed down back on the table, and it screeched. 

The other two opened up their eyes with a snap, “There we go.” the Hollow denizen said with a matter-of-fact tone.

“Alright, that’s good, I’m glad we could help you!” Leaf replied.

The undead body was still screaming.

“Yes, it was much appreciated, it might have been quicker if those ammomancers came back, but it’s good us kin can keep a sense unity in this wretched place,” he was shaking Leaf’s hand rather than clinging onto it, he let it go after finishing his sentence.

The body stopped screaming, rolled onto its side and started looking around. 

“Go on now, you don’t need us anymore,” Leaf told it as if they were talking to a cute Pinhead.

“Ah, wait, I need to give it its gun, that’s probably why it’s confused,” the Bullet Kin walked around the table and cut past me, he handed a small revolver to the animated corpse.

The skeleton, newly reborn, got up and started ambling around the room as if it was looking for someone to fight.

Leaf smiled, proud of their new creation.

“Leaf, uh, we have to go,” I tried to tell them without the weird ammomancy using kin noticing us.

“Wait, now?”

“We’re under a time limit, remember?”

“But that gungeoneer went back to the top on his own, we should have all the time we need now?” Leaf was undeterred in their weird shenanigans. 

“But we sh-”

“Is something the matter already?” the other Bullet Kin heard us, “You seem hesitant, have you been recently cast or something? Don’t worry, I can answer your questions if you want.”

“Questions? Me?” 

“Questions, yes questions, were you not given your ammomancy induction? Did you miss it? It’s okay you can tell me, not like I’ll report you to the High Priest or anything,” the Bullet Kin let out a small chuckle. 

I played along, lied a little, “Well, yeah, I did miss it,” for a Bullet Kin I probably looked relatively young, not freshly forged. Then again, it was very hard to tell how long a Bullet Kin had existed, I still had no idea how long Leaf had been surviving, they were nowhere near damaged enough to be a veteran. I knew Leaf was older than me, but I had no idea by how much, maybe it was a lot, more than I realised. 

“Well, first of all, don’t be scared, it’s not painful, not to us anyway.”

My eyes flicked back to the skeleton creature, roaming around without a care in the world.

“Did you know? The Hollow and the Forge are the only places where Bullet Kin learn any form of ammomancy? The other floors don’t even know because they don’t need to know. They think they can’t do it, but really it’s inherent in all of us.”

_ Inherent, huh? _ Yet they still kept hid all those spellbooks away in the Keep of the Lead Lord, were they kin who lived there convinced they could never do it because they hadn’t tried. Yet I had come all the way down here for a magical audience with Kaliber. 

“Like, we can all do it?”

“That’s exactly what I mean, though there is a distinction between combat ammomancy and dark ammomancy, which, though it sounds odd, is more practical. We may not be able to fight using ammomancy, but all of us can raise the dead. Raising the dead demands longer rituals and more than one of us, not practical in combat but very practical for raising our defences outside of combat, in preparation for an attack. Are you following me so far?”

I did that weird Bullet Kin nod, awkwardly indicating agreeance.

“We don’t conduct our rituals using English, the native gungeon language. We had our own language for a time, our farewell ‘may you have dignity in death’ is kind of a relic from that time. It was just one word before. It might sound clunky now, but it still retains its message, a curious bit of information.”

“Yes, I agree, it does retain its message it.”

“Our old language is much more organic. We might speak in full words and sentences now, indicating abstract metaphors, objects, places but we’re still just living bullets. Using our old language reminds us of that – we can be reloaded. Sometimes situations are fleeting and temporary, but we’ll always come back, well, most of the time.”

“Reloaded, right…” I started to step away, I wanted to think for a second or two by myself about what I just saw, only to be stopped by Leaf racing towards me.

“Spire, hello?!” they waved their fist in front of my face, I pushed them back, causing them to almost trip under the stone table. 

“I can teach you more if you come back later, it’s not a hard language to grasp, trust me, most of us learn it easily.”

_ Learn it easily? How could whatever that was be called a language?!  _

“Spire!” Leaf snapped.

“Is something the matter with your friend?” The Bullet Kin sounded genuinely patronising this time.

_ I couldn’t do this. _

“Well, she does get like this sometimes, not often, I can escort her away.” 

_ Hey, Leaf stop favouring him, you are supposed to be with me!  _

“Well if she’d need some time to think then it’s best, she has her own space.” 

_ It kept walking. The sound of bones shaking against themselves, spinning in my head. _

“Yes, Leaf, let’s get out of here!”

Leaf looked at me, puzzled.

I pulled their fist forward and started dragging them forward through a door in the upper half section of the room. 

“So glad I helped with the ritual,” Leaf yelled as hauled them along the carpet. 

“Have dignity in death, students!” 

Some metallic sounds rang out from Leaf’s mouth, I laughed nervously, we kept running. We made it to the next room.

The room, a tiny room. The room, where, from behind that door the High Priest would stand. Where he should be standing. Where, even if he was no in there now, he would be nearby.  _ Could I sense by the pull of his energy? Kaliber’s energy. _

“We did it, we’re here, we made it!” Leaf said. 

“We did, the both of us… we’re in the Hollow, we’re alive, all the searches I went through, all the time the walls shifted, and we ended up dead again, we still did it and we got here.”

My stomach wrenched. The extent of the spell, its contents were rolling about in my mind. Summon Kaliber, just over this ancient ritual. Dark ammomancy. We have a place where life and death are the same, why wouldn’t rebirth and death be the same too?

I knocked on the giant golden frame, and the room opened. 

It was all dark inside like a fog had rolled in and covered the room. Tiny candles hid in each of the corners, the bright red clashing against the cool colours of the fearful area. The little candles, all clear and gummy white. They seemed to have faces drawn onto them as if they were alive. I didn’t want to touch them in case they were alive. Alive but being stuck as a motionless, a sentient candle would hardly be called life. It could not act on its own free will – simply stuck as imagery. 

_ They are alive. They are screaming, can’t you hear it? _

“Where is he?” Leaf asked, looking around.

“I-I-I’m not sure…”

I look back at the words, the diagrams on the spell. Yes, it was all coming together. 

High Priest or no High Priest.

Leaf’s appearance was clear despite the illusive smog spreading itself around the room. They had almost pristine casing. They had always looked that way as far back as I could remember, bright. How did they keep themselves so bright after such a long time in service of this place? It startled me. Leaf, they frightened me. They were as bright as the day that I saw them. Just as bright as that day when… 

_ The magic return to me, hate starting to grow inside of me.  _

_ Supposed to be -  _

“You!”

“Me, Spire?”

“You wrote this, this section, it’s all your handwriting it was you who…”

Leaf snatched the old spell out my hands and looked at it, their gentle eyes gazing up and down, “Oh, yes, I did, that was… me that is my –”

“It was your fault…. it was -”

_ You did this to me. You did this to me. You – _

_ Kaliber will reclaim the answer. Reclaim. Me. From. The.  _

_ Reclaim. Rewrite. Reforge the mistake. Reverse. The.  _

“It was such a long time ago, I know I should have realised it sooner but, I wanted to come down here with you so I could make it up to you.”

Leaf got closer to me. They got closer to me and closer to be until they were hugging me, “Spire, I’m so glad that I got to meet you.”


	10. Unbecoming Us

_It’s too warm here and I shouldn’t have come here. Nobody should come here – not me and not anyone._

_The place lower than death is the place of birth. Rebirth is the end of the cycle; I should have known. Society. Law. Formation. Death. Birth. The descent into the darker place. The darkest place is the place of creation._

_You were there. You were there amongst them and I recognise you now. There were lots of others like you._

_I had seen lots of others like you. I had seen a lot of others like you everywhere._

_They scurried, they fled when I was nearby. I had grown more terrifying for each time I had woken back up at the top of the gungeon: the very top of the gungeon._

_I can now recall how I planned; I schemed each time before I would descend. I would get better, I would get stronger, I would become stronger and stronger._

_I never thought I could be too strong, so feared that it must be cut from me and cut it from me they did._

_Their blank eyes never deterred me. Their soulless eyes never deterred me. I must have secretly enjoyed it, with the rest of them: seeing them screech with rhythmless pain as their souls left their bodies._

_I had gone into the Forge with confidence. I was glad to get out of Hollow. The sweet place of the organic – the most organic part of this artificial place. The most artificial part was the forge. I had thought that anyway. The bullets who spoke were made of artificial materials, the weapons creations of this place, even the time travelling gun itself – generated here. There was no Goddess here – only hands working to create with their hurried minds working against time itself. It was not natural – the only natural part was death._

_This made this entire place much more simplistic._

_I thought I understood it._

_Understanding was impossible. Understanding was ripped away from me. It was ripped away from me by you._

_Understanding. Impossible understanding._

_Hammers clashing through my eardrums. Sentient fire passing and phasing through the walls. Your brethren were still there, in their last feeble attempt to protect their prized possession. There only weak feeble attempt. My goodness they were trying their best. Trying their best._

_Their best never good enough._

_Unless what I came across was their best._

_It was for sure the worst thing that they had and the worst thing that they could do. The worst thing they could ever do._

_You seemed just like the others but that was a time where I severely underestimated the others._

_I couldn’t recall what I needed the gun that could kill the past for anymore. It must have been so clear in my mind back then. It could have been for something heroic, or for someone who I cared about, maybe I used to be a hero. I could have been a hero once. I could never have the chance to be one now. There were no heroes here._

_You had not approached me with any aggression when I found myself in that strange little room in the Forge. Neither had any of the others. You seemed so preoccupied. The bright lights of the walls, the fires burning warmly all around. The red and silver of the walls a décor of technology reaching so close to what I saw on my old home, at least, that’s what I could remember of it._

_Was I forced to forget it? Did I want to forget it?_

_This is my home. I have no home. This was my rejection._

_I had never seen machines so big. Nor had I seen so many of your kind running away without trying to kill me or me trying to kill them. They seemed so free, perhaps I was free the moment I emerged?_

_They were so free and they were so bright. The brightness was on your face too, it was on all of their faces. The fire had brought them such great light._

_Light of purpose. Of Belonging if only for a few moments in-between finality._

_The discussion, the words which passed my ears stopped when I had entered._

_I notice one of your kind take a prayer, this one is almost as tall as me, their bright red hat denoting symbolism which I should have seen somewhere before. They seem so peaceful in a room so full of burning. The flames, burning. I can’t hear them, I think they say that they want this to last. They want this to last in the language that I too speak._

_Two others come to see me, one is red and one is blue, Shotgun Kin they must be called. They do not look like you but they are of your kind as well._

_There is no escape._

_They say most of us never leave._

_They say most of us go missing._

_Most of us give in somehow._

_We fail._

_Become part of the décor._

_We are captives, we are missing._

_We are…_

_I am awake._

_You are here and there are others with you._

_You are here to oversee the operation. You did not, as far as I knew looking for me to bring me here, you were as mechanical as the machinery which operated. A clockwork mind, clog in the machine. Yet still, conductor. This place is not natural. It is the antithesis of natural._

_I have been here for too long._

_Unnatural time has caught up with me._

_I am the unnatural._

_I thought I understood._

_It will happen one tomorrow._

_It happened today._

_Placed above me, and I can’t get away, a large grey machine stands, a hammer of some kind? It looks like it belongs to an unknown future. It doesn't belong in the gungeon but it doesn't belong at home either. Can it belong here? Can it belong to me?_

_Something was beside me, two more grey plates me fall and collapse aside the hammer. The squeeze and crush the sides of my frame. My skeleton, my body is close to breaking. This body, this frame, is it a human frame? It is a construction which has no place here – I see it in their eyes._

_I saw it._

_I saw how they wanted to destroy me._

_I could just about see outside of the constructing grey boxes, the Cardinal still singing, they can sing louder than machines? They keep wishing for this to remain. They get their wish. They get their wish and it is me._

_I am locked in, but I still see your face. The eyes are careless, undead._

_At first, it was burning: it was burning the room is burning and I see red._

_How much can flesh burn?_

_Enough in a way that won’t bring physical annihilation. Enough so that it allows for human flesh to be reforged._

_You would have used to word ‘repaired’ wouldn’t you?_

_It’s burning here, it’s burning and it hurts. It burns until I don’t feel it. It burns until I don’t feel anything anymore. I burns so that only my sight exists. My sense of smell, taste, fade, I only see burning and can only feel the pure and untamed levels of heat leaving and entering this weak skin._

_I can still breathe but where was this breath even coming from? I was able to breathe as I was coming undone._

_Coming undone._

_Undone._

_Undone._

_This place is in inorganic – real matter like the human body does not make sense here. To fit inside of this place, you must be reconditioned with undue violence. Violence which you cannot understand._

_Violence enough that I could not see myself._

_Violence enough that I could not feel myself._

_I sensed that the metal plates had raised. Not that I could see, it was the air which moved around me. It was still hot, too hot but at least the burning air wasn’t attached my skin anymore._

_I was defenceless._

_The voice was still saying something: “To let Kaliber, help them remain.”_

_The Cardinal could have been you too?_

_Now I remember you in two different places? Was that the case? Were you that magical, that unnatural?_

_I was empty._

_Nothing left in me, physically, otherwise._

_Then I was choking. The breath too was cut._

_If I could sit up I would have been able to cough the blood up and have escaped this hardening frame._

_There was more of them, more of you, more of your kind?_

_More of them._

_All I saw amongst the blurs, the awareness._

_Was I dying soon? Please, gungeon let me die soon, let me die so I can go back. Skull cracked. Broken Back. Coming undone, to be made formless._

_To be formless – To be reformed._

_I could vaguely see the blood I was losing scattered but in an already red scene. Whatever was inside of me was taken out and replaced. I was awake the entire time and functioned during each transition of the replacement – unaware of what the replacement was and unaware of what I was becoming._

_It was warm here, but I was growing colder._

_Cold because I was unmovable, like metal._

_Unmoveable and cold._

_I had been replaced. Literally, metaphorically replaced._

_“Help them remain, please, keep them, keep them here and alive…”_

_Let me die! You freak, you monster let me die! What’s wrong? Let me die? If it’s so easy here. Let me die._

_The metal plates are falling away from me. I see your face and the face of the rest of them, how are you becoming distinct?_

_The heat is still there, in my air, remaining lungs, it is blazing too, I am coughing, pushing the air in and out of me. Deep black air. It seems like deep black air._

_My eyes are burning with the rest of me._

_You, your brethren are stepping away from the body._

_I still can’t move._

_I still don’t realise what you did to me and how._

_Are my eyes operating yet?_

_Is it enough to really see myself?_

_Not just my pain, but what was made of me?_

_I was here._

_I was still locked in._

_I was locked in but I could now see._

_Had the Forge changed? Not it looked the exact same as it had before. Identical. Had time passed._

_You are talking with an authoritative tone, “Help the new one get down to the lower levels.”_

_I saw others like you walking away in the same direction you directed me towards._

_My vision had come crawling back, and so did my hearing._

_Behind me was metal contraptions, on all the other walls were metal contraptions. Stores of metal, liquid, stored on all of the walls and in-between each of the metal stores was burning, flowing magma. Thick, gloopy, turning, deadly, but nobody in this room seemed to care._

_“They are awake, help them please they are awake!” the Cardinal is still here, they cry out in the same tone of voice._

_Me, awake. Still cold, warm, heavy. I couldn’t see my arms or legs and my form was unidentifiable. It was outside of myself._

_I was not physically inside this body. I couldn’t be. I couldn’t have been._

_The faces which seemed so menacing grow concerned. Some that were helping the others of their sort, they came to help me instead. You looked deathly worried, oh, I think you were crying. Were you crying out of concern for me? You had not done that in a long time? I remember how you cried for yourself but now it was touching how you were crying for me, it was so touching._

_You were crying for whatever was stored in this body – what was going to become me, or what you made of me._

_They took the long way up before I had received a name._

_I would emerge from the abyss as another, without memory of the former._

_I had really become…_

_I had really…_

_I can’t I can’t I can’t I…_

I still saw you through the darkness. The fog was consuming you even though you were so close to me. 

You were here with me as the vague signs of conscience entered this withering shell. The burning had felt real as my mind continued to wrap in continued circles. 

You, Leaf, held this wreck as it shivered like it was going into utter collapse. There was a warmth inside my veins, my blood that was charging my tears had felt warm too. I could barely feel them passing down my metallic frame. 

Leaf clung to me and reminded me how wrong it was for me to be like this. It was wrong for us to be like this. We shouldn’t have even met each other, yet I wanted to genuinely comfort them. I couldn’t do it with this fake body, without the movement, the freedom of the self I had before, I couldn’t do it without being me, and I wasn’t me at all.

“S-Spire, I’m here Spire… just…” 

I grabbed them with my nubs of hands, gathering just enough thrust to push them away and send them backwards onto one of the pillars. My rage was becoming my strength. I had always been stronger than Leaf was, enough to pull them and push them. I had wondered how much they felt that? How much now that I had genuinely wanted to hurt them.

“You… you took everything from me!”

“No I… that’s not the point, Spire.” Leaf was undeterred, and they ran up to hug this worthless metal container. I brought my floating fists to my side, and this time, I let them try and embrace me again. The tears clogging up my eyelids continued to flow.

“You’re here, aren’t you Spire? You exist, and you’re here…”

I continued crying. I didn’t want to speak; the effort was too much. This shell was losing energy.

“You’re alive, you’re my friend! This is still life, isn’t it?”

“Still… life… right? Life that seems to go on forever.”

“You’re still alive and maybe alive forever, and you’re worth something?! Aren’t you… aren’t we?”

_I had spent lifetimes laying on the ground, in the dirt, defenceless, the pain of death never fading. Those memories of my heart exploding, breaking, they were there. Conscious buried. Still, nothing was as painful as when I met you._

“Worth… you’re saying that this life has worth despite being ruined?”

“Of course, is something wrong with…”

I look down at myself in contemplation. The gundead had no need to look in mirrors, but I think this must have been some form of protection for them. There must have been others like me.

“I’m not even alive…Leaf… I’m not…”

“Nonsense! You’re here, you’re with me, you’re fine, we’re with each other and –”

“You don’t care about me… you care about this shadow that you –”

“A shadow? What do you mean?” They showed no sign of breaking up this hug. It was restraining against my metal skin.

“I’m not me. Spire is a word, something you called the thing that replaced me.”

“But you’re here… aren’t you, you’re you… are you saying?”

“The real Spire, the rest of her, her name, it was lost, it was ripped away, now there is just someone else here.” 

“Lost to what? You’re clearly here and real, who’s to say that you aren’t like who you were before? I don’t know who you were before but… I bet you were one of the good gungeoneers, the humans around you saw you that way… you were a friend to them. Your body might have changed but you, you’re still the same on the inside right? You’re alive, and you’re breathing and…infinite.”

“But I’m not. Spire isn’t real because she stopped existing when she entered the Forge. I’m something else… some kind illusion that you convinced was called ‘Spire’, and because I was dreaming this, I believed you.” 

“Then where do you go when you wake up?”

“W-w-w-where is there to go? If I’m not here… then I can’t be, anywhere can I?” 

The fog was starting to clear. The red starlight of the candles burned through and the blue walls were coloured purple. There was the sound of air swooshing pounded. The warm container which held me was not cooling because I could not stop crying.

“You can be here, you are one of us, I promise!” 

“No-n-n this isn’t a-anywhere I can-”

I sensed that a great dark figure had appeared next to me. My eyes were half-blind, but the sheer towering force was enough to make me pay attention. A voice sounded from the rising figure. 

“Now, now, what silly problems are you two having that I can console?” 

It was the High Priest.


	11. My Dearest...

He was here!

I had been waiting so long to see him, yet I was still paralyzed in this stupid frame.

“Leaf…get…off…me, Leaf get off me!” I still had enough rage in me to push them away again, even more viciously this time. They fell onto their side and screeched.

“Gah, Spire, you…”

The High Priest laughed. Even with the dark hood covering his face I could see his horrific bright red eyes flashing like the chandeliers in the Keep of the Lead Lord. There were dozens, thousands of the things. Bees, bees emerging from their dull hives, ready to unleash a grotesque shock.

“There is a problem yes, are you asking for aid from the gungeon itself?” The High Priest was still, the only movement came from those many many eyes flashing in and out of existence.

“Please, let me talk to Kaliber, let me see her let me…”

“A big ask for such a small one, hm? A small one so lacking… but I suppose I can try and let you have an audience with your dear Goddess.”

“S-Spire…” Leaf was spluttering as they lay on the ground, good. I hoped that he would get erased down there.

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Show me Kaliber, please, I beg of you, she needs to tell me what I can…”

“Shut your eyes Bullet Kin! I can summon the images you need for an audience with your Goddess. Remember if she only appears in flashes, or is unclear to you then that is to be expected. Nothing is wrong, but Kaliber only reveals her true face to the sort that deserve it.”

I was practically on my knees at this point. “No, she needs to see and tell me and get me out of here, she will, she will!”

“What Kaliber chooses to show you is of a mystery to me, even as I am her avatar, I cannot read everything that even she shows me. Kaliber is wrapped in riddle.”

“She’ll show me what I need,” I growled, “She’ll show me!”

The High Priest was undeterred by my words. I heard cluttering as Leaf turned to their side and coughed. The dark fog began to roll back into the room covering all of the room, even stubbing out the little, potentially once-living candles. All the colours of the room drained this time. All that was left was grey, black.

I looked around, everything around me was blurring. The High Priest himself had faded, I couldn’t see Leaf anywhere either, they too had faded into the shadows. I was going into nothing. There was nothing here, there was nothing here but me.

“Kaliber? Kaliber! KALIBER!”

Below me was nothing, above me was nothing. There was no echo to catch my screams in the emptiness. There feeling of the carpet, which was there before had faded, I couldn’t feel anything, I felt nothing. I wasn’t dead – I knew what death felt like too well, death was much more painful than this.

Whatever the High Priest had done, he had brought me to somewhere else or had Kaliber brought me to this somewhere else? Was this void perhaps her domain?

“Kaliber… are you here for me? Do you accept me, can you release me from this… please, I beg, let me out, let me out, let me out!”

**Let what out?**

I heard a voice coming from somewhere. Deep. Booming. Majestically feminine. All the power I could ever need? I was comfortable, yet in the knowledge that I was also to be intimidated.

“Yes, please, I know I may be a devoted follower but that is why I ask for your mercy, I know that I should want to be with you but I just need to get back, I swear, trust me, I don’t belong here you should…”

**Belong here, dear? Why you were created here weren’t you?**

_Created, but in what way did ‘created’ mean now?_

I didn’t want to answer that question: I knew whichever answer I gave it would have been false. I didn’t have any energy, or enough power to lie to a Goddess.

**See, was it not I that provided you the spark of life when nobody else would?**

“My spark of life was not forged here, only my existence was, my Goddess…”

**Then what did provide that spark of life in you?**

“Elsewhere… somewhere… Elsewhere…”

**What do you mean it was not I?**

“I don’t know what I mean. I don’t know.?”

Nowhere: the nowhere was expanding. In front of my little eyes, weak body, I saw a figure emerging, dark blue, three eyes, couldn’t make out the rest. Was she really here? Dearest… Kaliber… she had entered my heart and must have done so with her soul too. I was at her mercy; I couldn’t stand up to her – I feared asking her, I feared…

**I know where you come from.**

“Then can you bring me back? Please, just bring me back?”

**I can take you back to yourself.**

“You know where I come from? Really? You really really do?”

**I know all within the confines of this place.**

_The confides of the gungeon – the confides of this void too? The whole of Gunymede? What was there beyond this?_

“And outside?”

**I can see beyond this place. I foresaw your coming too.**

**You came here for a reason, didn’t you?**

_I had reasons? What was my reason? Reason, purpose, something which had also become undone here – it was undone with the rest of me._

“Teach me my reason! Teach me how to get it back!”

**I can’t give it back to you. You lost it when you gave me your name and entered this place.**

“It’s lost then? Am I lost too?”

**That’s your choice, but at least you have me.**

**I’ll be here for you, won’t I?**

“How will that get me back? You’re here for me?”

_If she is here for me, then I cannot leave, is that correct? Has Kaliber caught me is that what she was saying? Being lost, a choice? A choice Kaliber can fix?_

**I can’t undo what has been done, but you’re here to solve that very issue right?**

**To kill your past?**

**Is that correct?**

“How can I kill my past if I don’t know what it is?”

_I had a past, somewhere, I had entered the Forge with a past and lost it. I had entered the gungeon with a past but it had gone missing. It could not be killed if it had not existed at all if it had ceased to exist if it had been erased._

_Was the other Spire erased with the past? She had been gone – taken – Leaf had taken her, Dearest Goddess, Kaliber had taken her. She was gone._

“Can you bring her back, the old me, the human me, I want her back, reverse what your followers did to me… reverse it!”

**But just look at what you’ve done!**

**Just look at the amazing chaos you’ve caused.**

**Do you really want to go back to serving no purpose?**

“I can rediscover my purpose, I promise, I promise, I can’t do it here.”

_I can’t do it. I can’t rediscover having been undone._

**You really think you could kill your past now?**

“I would… if I could imagine it… I would if you could give it back to me, dear Kaliber.”

**Well, why would I want to do that?**

“Because I need it back, I want my past back.”

**I won’t give you back what you don’t know. You have lost it. It is unneeded, isn’t it? I cannot imagine what you were either. Your name has to been lost, as has your image.**

“So you can’t give this… lowly Bullet Kin, your dear follower what she deeply deeply desires?”

_The void: It closes in against hapless little me._

_I was just that close to giving up. I was willing to show the Goddess so sweetly, who she wanted me to be. I admitted what I was made into. I was wrong to do that._

_I was so so wrong to do that._

**No, but I can give you something else.**

“Please, please, dear Goddess, give me what I need!”

_I didn’t resist._

_I had taken my chance._

_I had to accept her offer._

_Oh! Her mercy was so kind, it was so gentle, it was so accepting…_

_It was taunting me._

_It might have refused the deep desire of reversal and maybe even the punishment of Leaf, and yet…_

_It had given me…_

_It had given me…_

**I can grant you more meaning than you ever had before.**

_More than I could ever have._

_More than I could have ever deserved._

_More than I could have ever expected._

“If this is… all you have for me, and it will never bring the real me back, then oh dearest goddess, give this to me.”

_I didn’t actually want this._

_I wanted my life back._

_But not even a Goddess could bring back that what was permanently erased._

_That, or she didn’t want to._

**If this will bring you comfort, poor follower.**

“Comfort is what I am seeking in the end, isn’t it? Yes?”

_The void it was overwhelming. There was nothing here, nothing her but Kaliber and I. Where was the High Priest? Kaliber spoke through him I thought, but I would not hear his voice. This was with absolute certainty the real Kaliber, voice of the gungeon, voice of all of us, the living, breathing, heartbeat of this place. There would be no gungeon without Kaliber. No gundead. No Bullet Kin. This place would be void just as where I am now, wouldn’t it? Where would I be?_

**It will give you what you were looking for.**

**Perhaps not in the way you’d expect it.**

**But it is a gift.**

**Treasure it.**

“You, my Goddess, have a gift for me?

**I have wonderful things for you.**

“Of course, you do, you are my Goddess, right?”

**Something special for you.**

**You who have been broken by so much.**

**You who are broken being like this.**

**You can let go of your fears of being unable to belong.**

**I can make it so.**

“Make it so, Goddess, give me what I have lost.”

_Drawing in, drawing in on me,_

_Kaliber was growing in closer. Her eyes, massive, glaring, glowing pits of fire. Two on the sides and one directly in the centre of the head. I saw nothing else of her, there is nothing else to see of her is there?_

_Dearest Kaliber… I told you, I was no more than one of your followers with such… these issues of abandonment, I was weak._

_Kaliber believed it but she could not accept that I was human once, that is what it seemed._

_Unless…_

_When Leaf had undone me like that, had they changed my soul too? Could Kaliber see that? Had the last human part of me also been replaced?_

_My past erased, ceased, I was never human, I cannot be human in the future because my ability to imagine it had been destroyed. No human past and no human future, so much that Kaliber could not see it either. She was a goddess and it was blind to her._

“Give me… what I…” paralyzed, I continued to beg, my eyes filling with tears again. My hope of the spell restoring me to what I knew was dashed.

_I was at the mercy of my Goddess who I thought was being oh so nice to me in her way._

**Don’t be sad.**

**You have no need to be sad.**

**Not anymore.**

_Kaliber._

_Kaliber._

_Dearest Goddess, what is this?_

_Something in my slug is pressing. Pressing. It hurts like the fire._

_Fire. The Fire is back. Oh, shit the fire is back. The fire which changed me._

_Kaliber was everywhere. Kaliber was the air. Kaliber was on my breath. Kaliber she was…_

_Everything burnt and what I saw could not be described._

_Kaliber._

_Blessing of the gundead._

_Curse of the gungeoneers._

_A blessing to me._

_I saw those flames. I kept seeing them. Fire. Fire. The ultimate power of destruction. Kaliber. She is and was all the powers of destruction and as I was forced to embrace her, I was able to become that destruction too. I was her destruction._

_Her destruction which was fuelled by her rage. Her rage, warm liquid on my tongue. Enveloping, rage. Her rage against all those who stood against the gungeon, those would reclaim the prize of time. Those who squandered the gifts this place would give them and take the routes which would destroy them instead or defy her orders. How dare they deft her orders? How dare they defy the orders of a Goddess? How dare they defy me? Those humans they would come, and they would battle so unfairly. To deny this dear Goddess of her guns and triumph._

_Her rage gave forth to death. The real, supreme power over death in the gungeon came from dearest Kaliber and soon, it would come from me too. Greatest denizen, willing servant. Kaliber knew that her precious forces might die and over and over again until their minds were warped into forgetting who they are. Kaliber can take away memories, events, rewrite, erase if she needs to. I see why she does, for our protection, now I will be able to see those supposedly erased events with my own eyes and they will hurt me as much as they hurt the last Bullet Kin. And the last Bullet Kin. And the last Bullet Kin…_

_Death, however, would always give forth life. Death was not the end in the gungeon. Death in the gungeon isn’t real it never was. Erasure is real, the memories which became muddles, clouded, replaced, the lives which and existences of individuals which never fell either side of the line where they were both remembered and erased, presumed alive but really gone forever. The messy waters, dozens of grey lines which meant death meant nothing and absolutely everything. Life meant nothing and absolutely everything. I was eternal. I was ephemeral. I was destined to fade. We were all destined to fade. I was not ready for it._

_Death – Life – Reincarnation. Reincarnation the natural result of all cycles. Life which has been destroyed so many times only to be brought back will naturally change. The gungeon was the place of change. Of ultimate change. Nothing escapes the gungeon and if it does, it will not escape the same way as came in. I can’t escape either. Death is temporary but reincarnation is forever. I was stuck as a Bullet Kin unless I would be forced to change again. I was becoming more than a Bullet Kin. I felt it in Kaliber’s burning fury. I was becoming more than human._

_There was nothing here: Kaliber and I becoming one. In the void, we join into love for oblivion._

_I saw…_

_I see…_

_I see…_

_The pain of the fire broke down._

_I drifted slowly into the endless shadows._


	12. My One Chance

“Leaf, High Priest?” I heard my panicked voice crying out.

I gasped for air, realising, slowly that I was back in the exact same room I was in before. Yet, there was nobody here this time. The High Priest had vanished, I had called his name, and he had not reappeared. Leaf was gone too. I wondered how they had gotten up from the ground so quickly without aid.

_ Just how long had I been gone? _

There was no longer any black fog in the room. It clear, picturesque almost. I wouldn’t have even called it ‘dark’. It was bright, perhaps as bright as the water running on the planet of Gunymede? Or as bright as the sky was on Earth? It was also quiet enough so that I could listen to the faint murmuring of the living candles. 

All the pain I had wrestled with while Kaliber had done… something to me had subsided. I felt real again, but I didn’t feel quite right either, I didn’t feel quite me. So perhaps Kaliber still hadn’t helped me find my place? 

_ Had I hallucinated? Was this all for nothing? _

The more I looked around me, the more my vision started to fracture and blur. Parts of the room started to physically shatter. The outlines of the pillars coming apart and in their place, I rising bodies. Bodies in piles along the ground in hazy states. Not just that, there were images of several other gungeon dwellers there too. There was a fraying, false vision of the High Priest, the great wall of frozen gundead, the Kill Pillars awoken with their spirts inside. The images move like paintings stuck on top of one another. Unmoving but shuffling each frame. Regardless of what happens, both parties are trapped. The frames almost seemed to have a part of their soul, and each time I watched one of them fall to the ground, it felt as if part of their soul went with them. 

I longed to reach out and touch them, but when I did, those images just wrapped and warped around my nubby hands. There was no flesh there, no stone – nothing to touch. They were just unreachable reflections of the past. Unfixable. I could see every single disaster, personal or grandiose playing out through all those timelines. 

I leant up and touched my face something on it stinging as I glared at these rows of memories. From what it felt like, it was if there were rows of large gaping holes in my face—uneven circles which opened up into a hollow shell, emptiness as if there was nothing inside. 

Kaliber had done something to me, something which I hadn’t seen yet. I kept blinking. Each time I blinked, I still saw each of the scenes running through my head as if I couldn’t shut them at all. 

I started running around the room, searching for something, any kind of reflective surface that could have physically shown me what had happened. I tried to mentally block off all of the images that burnt through my brain. I knocked about the pillars and stared at the light of the crying candles. 

Just then I remembered something: the cold. The Hollow was the coldest place in the gungeon so much so that puddles of ice would form from whichever cool liquid they used to preserve the bodies. There had to be one in this room. I searched, panicking until I found something glittering at the very edge of the room. 

_ Please. Please. Please. Let me see myself again. _

There was the smallest piece of rippling ice stashed beside the bookcase. I curved my entire body in order to get a clear look at how Kaliber had changed me. 

_ The little Bullet Kin in the mirror.  _

_ The mirror, twinkling mirror. _

_ She was horrifying. _

Those uneven holes which poked out of my shell in a grotesque format were, in fact, my eyes. Bright red shining globes that rose horrifically like bugs screaming for release or undead spirits burnt to death in the Forge. 

I looked just like the High Priest.

_ This twisted form. _

_ The sheer disgust rattling inside of me. _

_ The way I had begged to Kaliber for meaning had made me more of a freak.  _

I looked at the entity before me. The initial shock was wearing off, and I was hit with the utter impulse to flee. 

_ Silly, fool of a Bullet Kin, I cannot run from myself.  _

_ I must cope with the sheer horror of my blessing. _

I couldn’t just flee. I couldn’t make the keep see me like this, and my body was screaming out to head towards the Forge. My real past was gone, evaporated. But my past as Spire still existed. Spire had at least someone who cared for her? 

_ Was it really better to run back now? _

I just couldn’t go back to the Keep of the Lead Lord, I didn’t belong there. I could only go, down, down, down until I could understand this absolute mess of a creature that I inhabited. 

_ The transformation. _

_ The gun. _

_ Maybe if I had enough hope left in me, I could still change this? _

_ A reset back to how I was before. _

_ I was stupid.  _

_ It was running from dear Kaliber.  _

_ Kaliber’s hold was far more powerful than any magical gun.  _

_ The Bullet and the Gun were both just her pawns too.  _

_ Now I was too, to the highest degree.  _

_ I wanted hope.  _

_ Like an idiot, I wanted hope.  _

I couldn’t even go down to the Forge like this. I feared that all of the others would look upon me the same way that I did myself. The would surely also be convinced to run or perhaps if they looked too deeply they would be forced to see what I saw. Their fears realised even more greatly.

In some kind of crazed itch, I found myself tearing up the grand carpet below me. My weak hands – I had no idea that they could tear and rip this material so relentlessly. The fury, mixed with my changing visions gave me the idea of pulling apart a gungeoneer’s flesh in desperation. 

This carpet was the only thing around that could reasonably fashion some kind of covering for myself. I scraped together enough material to create a kind of hood, albeit a crude one which at least hid my transformation from the eyes of the conventional gungeon denizens. 

Scattering I ran down the last staircase. The eternal, pressing darkness didn’t bother me, and those bright lights even helped me to locate my way through the narrow steps. Last time I headed down a floor I had Leaf with me, I was already starting to miss them, even though I now hated them.

The cold of the Hollow and warm of the Forge was intermingling, I was growing closer.

_ Warmth, Fire, Fire. _

_ As the red outlines of the platforms entered my sight, I wondered, would the Forge be my real home? _

_ The importance of reincarnation was so strongly regarded by Kaliber: my place of reincarnation, perhaps that’s where I should have been? _

Even if I wanted to stay, I had an urge to keep moving. Passing through these chambers of boiling, I searched for a way to get to into the aimless void. 

With my eyes open, I saw those same passing moments that I had seen in the Hollow were active even through my makeshift cover. I had too many eyes to close and thus couldn’t block them out completely, but as I gazed all around me at the place of churning metal I did feel kind of comfortable or had at least managed to convince myself that I was comfortable. The large hammers, dead blows to name them correctly, that fell down, crashing made me twitch but also gave me a feeling of nostalgia. The gungeoneers fell to the hammer-like I did, but they were not forced into changing form. Lucky souls. 

A far distant memory, either returning to me or forcibly thrown up into the forefront of my mind again by Kaliber. I had my origins here, and she knew it. 

I needed to keep my mind off the universal failure around me. My mind almost inadvertently was cast back to the time that I took the long way up. A time back where I was needed:

_ I was followed by what seemed hundreds of others and hundreds of others followed me. _

_ One Bullet Kin at the front had what sounded like a gentle voice if it wasn’t fake. _

_ “Alright, everyone, we go to the top one at a time.” _

The peaceful voice in my head could block out the mental screams. 

_ There had been other places where a selection of these other yellow cylinders seemed to leave these great stairwells.  _

_ We were some of the last left. _

_ I did have some vague memories of the top of the gungeon.  _

_ I had known it to be some kind of vague wonderland like place, a castle with seemingly no end, outdoors and indoors all at the same time.  _

_ At some point, I must have had the ability to pass through this place with ease, destroying everything that I may have encountered there. That would never be the case again. _

_ “Wow, the whole court is here!”  _

_ The doors opened to me, what was to become me, and the rest of them.  _

_ “Go up carefully, we don’t want you damaging anything.” _

_ One by one we travelled. _

_ I still had travel moving in this absolute cage of a body. The little tiny hands and feet could barely move on their own. The sheer amount of order and lack of space inside was enough to make sure I didn’t fall over though. I only had to carefully navigate each induvial step. _

_ Then again. _

_ If I or any of the others above me were to slip, we’d all tumble and crash.  _

_ Maybe we’d even die? _

_ The smell of what seemed like grass?  _

_ I trembled, excited, almost as if I thought this was sign of release, a sign if I was dreaming and that I was getting out of the gungeon. This was false hope, stupid, stupid false hope. _

_ As I was called up, I found myself in the Keep of The Lead Lord.  _

_ Several eyes; several eyes from entities far bigger than me were gazing. Even after what had happened to me, I could still recognise the faces of Smiley and Shades. They were large and obviously distinctive. There was other Bullet Kin there too, a kind of gathering of them in a little line. Behind all of them was the Bullet King, serene, posing more like a statue than a living entity.  _

_ I emerged.  _

_ A room of fake grass, fake stones, a world I saw in a dream once, or maybe in my past life? _

_ It was peaceful here. _

_ It was deceptive here.  _

_ I started to wonder if they had done this to me on purpose, made me look upon a room that must have looked so much like Earth but at the same time was a mockery of it. _

_ “This is Spire,” The Bullet Kin with the gentle voice spoke as they emerged from the stairway in the ground, they pressed on my head. _

_ I didn’t say anything. I must have killed Smiley and Shades dozens of times, outsmarted them or just crushed them with my sheer strength, but at that time, I could only look upon them with fear. None of those memories of destruction were inside of me. I was both without a weapon and essentially helpless.  _

_ “Spire, much like the majestic structures at the top of the gungeon itself.”  _

_ Spire? I hadn’t used my real name in such a long time. The gungeon takes in names like it takes lives. All the time I had spent in this place, I had gone by a descriptor that I had now forgotten. It must have been a while since I was given a name, a real name. Yet, it was still one that was forced on me. Whether it further detached me from living in the gungeon or helped me embrace it, for a time. I guess I still went searching for myself, so in the end, it caused nothing but frightful detachment.  _

_ Spire, like the pinnacle of a tower, huh? A testament to great hight, representing the sheer, strength stature of whichever building it crowned. A testament to my own greatness or to my confinement?  _

_ “Welcome Spire, glad that you got here!” I think it was Smiley that said that. _

_ I didn’t talk to them, but I did stare back at the rows of Bullet Kin. _

The burning place of the Forge, which moved like a dream was coming to a close. Here this mess of a creature stood facing the largest door she had ever seen. Whatever I had done to get here I had somehow avoided the Blacksmith, bless her. I had no idea what the mythical woman at the bottom of the gungeon would have said if she had seen me. I didn’t want to know. Maybe she had seen others like me before, maybe that wouldn’t spare me her judgement. 

Such a lavish door. Made of perhaps marble of some kind – all cream and seemingly undamaged. A red carped long with golden trimmings leading into it. I had heard tales of a great beast at the bottom of the Forge. Gundead and Gungeoneers alike told stories about it in order to scare one another. I wasn’t scared anymore. 

Just outside the door, the visions of gungeoneers past lined up, some of them appearing to line up, others racing through carelessly as they often did. There was an excited look on almost all of their faces – not one of terror as you might expect. A little part of me almost felt glad for them, especially since they were so unaware that they were running towards their own demise. 

I had found a dropped red scarf as I had travelled through each of the Forge’s rooms of flame. It was further cover, but it still wasn’t enough to cover my bug-like facial appearance. Still, the more covering I had, the better. It must have been awful for someone to abandon it like that, I wonder what it did if it did anything at all? 

I didn’t want to enter, not yet. Like the gungeoneers slowly pacing themselves, I wanted to collect myself as well. I too might have to had to face the beast in the great Forge, but this would also be my chance to get The Gun That Could Kill the Past. I was willing to face it, the worst that would happen is that I would end up like this back in the keep with Kaliber’s blessing still intact. I don’t think that I could be erased, not like this. 

_ My first days as a citizen in this place felt aimless. _

_ I must have spoken to Smiley and Shades about something, but I don’t recall what. _

_ I also spent a lot of time just wandering through all the rooms, finding myself lost.  _

_ I hadn’t entered my first combat as a Bullet Kin, not yet, they hadn’t let me, I had something to hope for during those times. I had yet to go through those blood-drenched, soulless lifetimes, where I would feel myself die in a myriad of painful ways. Those few short days must have had some form of peace that I would never get to experience again, no matter how much I wanted it.  _

_ Freezing. _

_ Burning. _

_ Twisting me so brutally.  _

_ It must have been one of those first few days where I had met Leaf.  _

_ My entire brain playing puzzles with me but those who stood around me during that painful time was something I had remembered more than the transformation itself. It made something about them recognising them. _

_ A short, bright, Bullet Kin. A friend. A friend in the darkest place in the universe. _

_ Or so I had thought anyway.  _

_ I had only been drawn to Leaf because they had reminded me of someone… somewhere.  _

_ I wasn’t entirely sure what, and I had mostly forgotten all of my origins until I was forced to overcome and observe them again.  _

_ Bullet Kin weren’t supposed to have friends.  _

_ That’s how I came to see it. _

_ I think I was wrong.  _

_ I pushed away what I was scared to lose.  _

_ And so I sought the knowledge that made me lose everything.  _

I wanted to believe I had a chance to change this. 

As I gasped for breath in all these wrappings, even my breath felt like fire. I had to walk through that door eventually with all those mad gungeoneers whose desires lead to their flame of life being burnt out. 

I can’t burn, not again, I’ll make sure of that.

I walked forward, and the great doors opened on their own. They had a thunderous crack as they split open and pushed aside with tiring force. They didn’t want to be entered, yet they had to be entered. Pulling my hood over my disgusting self, even more, keeping my eyes down, I waddled through. 

And yet, there was nobody, nothing here.

No great beast of the Forge.

There was but a red carpet which stretched on and on before ending in a mighty pool of magma, spewing and bubbling. I almost wanted to call out for whatever creature might have been lurking below the depths. I felt lucky to have not seen it, things never went this ‘right’ for me, things never went ‘right’ like this for any Bullet Kin. 

I was felt astonishingly safe as I looked over this cramped room. The gungeoneers, the same faces from before were collapsing in their gory messes. Their eyes started to close as the one thing they were looking for was closed off to them once again. I couldn’t even see the beast as a reflective image which I would have had it died. It must have been for about two seconds where I saw something scaled and made of gold I couldn’t entirely make out. The beast of the Forge was really that unbeatable. 

One questioned remained though: how would I get over that magma pit? The gungeoneer’s bodies falling around me didn’t provide any optimism. There was no clear way out of this room, and yet I had to find a way without upsetting whatever scaled thing was sleeping in the magma. 

I focused ahead of me, there must have been something that I could –

There was a jump in time. The scarf, red with blood as it was tangled around my neck further as I seemingly leapt across the lava pool. 

I was over the other side without even thinking, I had only imagined it. It was as if the scarf has allowed me to reach across the pit. With all those, potentially thousands of gungeoneer deaths in this room alone, I was about to see what so few living entities got to. It was exciting, and I should have been excited by this, but I wasn’t. 

My slug was so full of nonsense, and I had but one aim, to get rid of it. There was no time to wonder about my so-called accomplishments. If I was to forget what was in front of me, then that was what it was to be. 

The next room continued into another room with the same grand red carpet but far more mesmerising. The visions of the gungeoneers seemed to almost stop here, and the few faces I saw were gone so fast I could barely register them. So, few had made past this point and from the way the room had been laid out, I thought it would have been considered an honour to be here. The liquid fire was still running through the floor, but this time in such a neat row, they seemed to flow both forward and into unseen rooms that couldn’t be accessed, maybe unless you were dragged through by force? I shuddered. There were pillars imposed by metal structures and great orbs of flame stored alongside the gold and red carpet. At the very end of the room was a stone door shaped like a massive skull, for the eyes bullets and in the centre of it was an unmoving clock. Time was as stationary as it was flexible. 

_ Perhaps I was destined to come here. _

_ Destined to end up like this, after all? _

The door itself seemed to reflect some kind of waterfall, or what I knew in the vague books the gungeon held—a waterfall of glittering yellow bullets at that. Not a single one of them seemed to have prior damage or age – was it just a continuously flood the doorway or did the bullet that could kill the past work to preserve these too?

It was truly a welcome fit for a king or a master.

_ Our master, the Lich, he came here, too didn’t he? _

_ Was it like this when he entered as well?  _

_ Had I even seen him through my past remnants? _

_ Was he a human at one point too? _

I passed through the entryway not knowing that I was passing through the curtain too. 

Light flashed as it felt as if I was dropped into an endless floating atmosphere. The air was lighter here, and when I opened my eyes, the world around me changed into infinite space—a gorgeous mix of purples, blues, pinks drifting through twinkling starlight. Bullets and clocks of bizarre shapes seemed to float through it with a uniform grace, swirling, directive, purpose. 

_ The true extent of ammomancy. _

_ The power of the gungeon in its truest and purest form. _

Brown, circular platforms hovering just a few feet apart formed a strange pathway up towards what could only be…

My heart leapt. 

This was it. 

This is where they kept the Gun that Could Kill the Past. I was so close, and my struggle to get here had been compliance, not combat. For once, it was not my blood that was shed, in fact, no blood was shed in order to reach this gun. The gungeoneers would have so much blood on their hands if they were to reach this point, not alone from this lifetime but from other lifetimes as well, they would dominate this place in order to claim it’s prize, but all I did was extend my hand to Kaliber. Let her take what of me she needed. 

I used the scarf again. Blinking across each of the platforms, feeling the lack of gravity fly me through the air. With none of the visions slowing me down, I drifted without hesitation until…

I was struck. 

Something strong, invisible beyond my hood pulled me down.

_ Burning. Burning. _

The heat had never been this strong.


	13. Leaf in the Archives

“Are you gonna pay the toll or just stand there, betrayer?”

Leaf tutted. “You know that’s not me Agunim, not every Bullet Kin you come across is the same one.”

“Yes, yes, whatever, do you have the casings or not?”

Leaf rolled their eyes, they knew for well that Agunim should just be letting them through, they shouldn’t have to pay in order to get into their own archives. “You know we don’t run around and collect those, don’t you? Just let me in, I live here.”

“Fine, fine. I’m just dying for some change around here, not even those gungeoneers care about this place.” Leaf watched as the green ball-headed creature slunk back into the grate he was covering. The grate exploded and left a hole large enough for a kin of any size to drop down without hurting themselves. 

If Leaf had any actual arms or shoulders, they would have crossed them in annoyance. Agunim always had to make things take longer than they needed to be. Their guess is that he was still bitter about his defeat. Of course, being a puppet for the gungeon’s hidden bureaucracy department didn’t exactly help. 

Leaf jumped and landed on the bottom of their primer. Only a slight pain, worth it for reaching this place for sure. Of all the things that Leaf forgot at least the directions to this crucial place wasn’t one of them. They had come here before, they had vaguely remembered working here, getting kind of lost in the endless files and books stored on the shelves. 

The R&G department was just as bland as they remembered it. It was almost as cold as the Hollow and even more sterile. The Bullet Kin who worked there hardly spoke to one another except through quiet hums. The entire floor took on a really unusual aesthetic, a far cry from the clockpunk stasis of the rest of the gungeon. It had likely been designed by a gungeoneer who had resigned themselves to helping the gungeon rather than fighting it. They had helped implement some of their cultural and design knowledge into the gungeon, the Bullet Kin, of course, gladly accepted.

It was otherworldly here, but not in an ethereal way. It was bland, white walls and a dusty dark blue carpet with brown rugs—little eerily perfect plants in pots. A better description of it would be ‘liminal space’. It was a place between places, record storing from pasts that might have never existed and futures that might never become true. 

The actual records in the R&G were kind of hidden away. The rest of the department was kept mainly for testing. Leaf had never worked in this part, so what exactly they were testing had always been a mystery, and frankly, they didn’t want to know. They had probably been told about it in some other timeline but had forgotten it in this one: they weren’t begging to correct that.

Most Bullet Kin would argue that the Hollow was the most uncomfortable place in the gungeon, even those who had visited it. Leaf argued that the most uncomfortable in the gungeon was here. The lack of communication and general unwelcomeness was, to Leaf, worse than the concept of having to participate in necromancy. 

Walking down the halls, Leaf knocked on a door. A flat, white door against the white backdrop made it almost seem invisible. However, it was distinguishable by the pressing outline and the appearance of a painted over keyhole in the wall. 

After an amount of shifts and clicks, the door was answered by a Bullet Kin wearing a purple blazer and an eye-patch over her eye. Leaf was surprised to find someone who was clearly a former combatant now a manager of records. Then again, their case was the opposite—a former record keeper, now a combatant. 

“Yes, come in…” her one eye grew in surprise, “Wait, is that, are you Leaf?”

“Wait, you know me?” Leaf questioned.

“Know you? You got famous down here after you left!”

“Famous, me?”

“The whole department was still shocked when you worked out how to do that little trick! You’re just like the Lich, you know, in a way? Is it still going by the way? That thing you were doing?”

Leaf shuffled about awkwardly, something about that question hit deep; clearly, this was another thing that they had tried to block out. “It’s not, as far as I know.”

“Wait? Really? I thought both dearest Kaliber and the Lich were impressed with you? Exciting times, huh?” her voice was irritatingly peppy.

“Exciting times… Uh, well, they made it illegal, it’s outlawed by gungeon law.”

“Oh,” she frowned.

If she really was a former combatant, then shouldn’t she be familiar with the gungeon law? The R&G department was odd enough so that law didn’t reach here, she might have transferred almost as soon as Leaf themselves had left. That or she had just forgotten gungeon law, fully having devoted herself to her role in the archives. 

“I mean, you’ll never guess what happened…” Leaf gulped and looked away.

“Hmph? What do you mean by that?” 

“The spell, the ammomancy thing that we used to do it, well someone found it.”

“Found it!?” she was reasonably shocked.

“Can I come inside? I have some questions of my own, plus I don’t think I want to yell this out to the entirety of the department.”

“Ah, yes, of course, Leaf. It’s kind of exciting to meet you!” 

Leaf never expected that they would have ‘fans’ However, realising that they did made them feel an awful lot worse about what they had done. The regret still knotting up their stomach even if all of the worry was now gone. 

The records were and excessively long and narrow space: Dusty, cramped. The same dull white colour as the outside areas of the R&G department but this time it covered both the ceiling, walls and floor. Stacks of shelves containing books, at least some of them possessed, Old guns which never actually reached any of the floors and a myriad of other things stored in boxes. 

There was hardly any space to sit down, but small areas where sets of seats and normally a water cooler were located in designated areas of the archives. Leaf followed the other Bullet Kin through the files and packaging until they reached such a location. 

“You want to take a seat?” she offered.

Leaf sat down with some hesitancy, unprepared from what they had to discuss with the stranger, “Yes, I would.”

“So, what is this so-called happenings then?” there was a hint of laughter in her voice.

“One of the, uh, the recipients of this spell, they, had a little realisation and I was in the firing line, partly by choice, but still…”

“Realisation, so like, they remembered.”

“They remembered, and it was my fault that they did.” Leaf’s voice was blunt, matter-of-fact.

Leaf stretched over, as much as a Bullet Kin could, and grabbed a paper cup. They placed it underneath the water cooler. They wondered if a cold drink would help with the strange sickness that they felt inside.

“Your fault? Did you mess up? Is really the reason why the department hasn’t seen your face in such a long time?” 

Leaf pulled the cup back and flung themselves back on the comfy chair. All the rest of the gungeon had little wooden stalls, sometimes chairs at best. The R&G department at least had these unusual foam-filled armchairs that would just kind of hug your casing entirely. If Leaf was lazy or tired enough, they could have easily fallen asleep in one of these things. Leaf probably would have missed them, had they remembered them. 

“Me, mess up? Well, no, I wanted to make it up for them?”

“Make it up for them?”

“Oh, you get it, for forcing them to be here. For dragging them into the cycle, making them one of us, you get it!” 

Leaf felt themselves tensing up, they took a sip of the cold water. The cool liquid was not enough to stop them from shaking.

“So you met one of them? And they remembered you? How could they have done all the way down in that little room deep in the Forge?” she turned and faced Leaf in her equally comfy looking chair. 

“That’s the thing I moved. It wasn’t you conducting those spells, working that machinery, hearing the Cardinals begging your ear for whatever pain they were going through. It was an experience. I can understand now why gungeon law decided to declare it illegal.” Leaf sighed, trembling, even more, they gulped down the cold water. 

“You would really move from the Forge, but to where? The Forge is one of the safest places here, well for the gungeon that is.” 

Leaf coughed a little as the water got caught in at the bast of their throat. “I moved down to the Keep of the Lead Lord.”

“You moved to the Keep of the Lead Lord?!” 

“I did. It was fucking awful,” Leaf threw the paper cup to the ground, “I forgot so much there rotting away like that.” 

“How long did you spend down there?”

“I don’t know, the time I spent down there all blurred together, I think I must be what, four-hundred of those human years, cumulatively now? Yet, I still look and feel so young,” Leaf leaned back into the chair and smiled, “Almost a good thing we don’t keep track of the time, eh? Though at least those Executioner Shotgun Kin couldn’t find me there.”

“So, you ran from the Forge?” 

“Ran? No, I gave up, took my project with me, I think the others down in the Forge tried to continue with it, I’m not sure if it was their fault that it got outlawed or just the whole immorality of the thing got in the way, I’m willing to bet on the former like the gungeon cares for morality though.”

“Morality?” the eye-patch Bullet Kin laughed. “I’m surprised you care?”

“When you’ve been watching what I have you start to slowly care, uh, what is your name anyway?” 

Leaf asked them.

“I’m Pyre!”

“I hope I remember it.” Leaf looked away from Pyre and back to the cup that they had dropped onto the floor, picking it back up. The cup itself was now far too out of shape to hold any water inside of it. 

“You met this, uh, creation of yours, you met them in the Keep of the Lead Lord?”

“Creation is such a dirty word, but yes, I did.” Leaf nodded, they were still confused as to how enthralled this other Bullet Kin appeared with them. Pyre might have been combatant at one point, but that doesn’t mean they had seen how ghastly the effects of the transformation were, or lead to, then again only they would really know that.

“What did they tell you. What was such a matter?” 

“They told me what I did to them, there and then, I wanted to apologise to them, they were more, uh, distraught than I realised. I thought that their life could be at least worthwhile down here, is being us really such a bad thing? I went down with them all that way with the knowledge they were gonna turn on me, I just thought if I told her she meant something to me, we could move on and just go back to the keep again. It was such a shame, I hadn’t had someone I considered a friend in a long time…”

“Well, could I be your friend?” Pyre said. 

Leaf was concerned with her dubious sense of earnestness, already growing to be worse and worse as they were made to explain all that they had done. 

“Well, now you’ve heard my story, I’m here to ask a question.”

“Oh, really, a question from me?” her voice rung out with a high screech. 

“Yes, my question is just, why? Why, why is this connection between the humans and gundead so strong. I know Earth has something to do with it, but the Lich’s teachings have vanished from my head. If my creation abilities had really made me-” Leaf winced as they continued their sentence. “Like him, then I want to know why?”

Pyre bounced off the chair in joyous haste and ran over to the archiving shelves that were directly ahead of us, tapping through a bunch of books and files, “Ah, my speciality I’m so glad you asked! Who would have thought that it would have been me – Pyre, to teach you, such an icon in the R&G Department, what they missed!” 

Leaf sat up again, they were about to interrupt, but they let her keep her enthusiasm. 

“Humanity and the gundead, and the kin like us especially are closer than most realise! They are far more than simple enemies, not even really enemies when you think about it. Not in the long term!” Pyre grabbed a very large red-leather book off the archive shelf and started flipping through it greedily. 

“Really? I can’t see us as friends…”

“Ha! Well, of course, I imagine living in the Keep of the Lead Lord does do a number on your knowledge if not your views and stuff too. Kaliber is absolutely obsessed with Earth, she has been for over one thousand of their own human years. Who knows how long cumulatively – maybe she’s been watching them with such closeness for almost as they as they’ve been around, not literally obviously, but in time frames!” Pyre skipped excitedly as she landed on the page that she was seemingly looking for. 

Pyre then continued by throwing the book onto Leaf’s lap, who struggled to grab it but succeeded, “Whoo, what a throw!” she cheered.

“What am I looking at here?” Leaf looked down at what appeared to be a set of hooded travellers wandering towards the gungeon in the distant past, they certainly looked nothing like any humans that they had ever soon.

“This is an old piece of artwork, a copy of one I should say, I think it’s one of the first human depictions of the gungeon when it was still a myth.”

Leaf reached out to tap it, “What do you mean, myth?”

“You really think Kaliber could reveal that she was abducting people from Earth to come here? Chasing them from any ends of the galaxy? Believe it or not, Humanity was barely a space-faring race before Kaliber started to aid them. Who was to think in under a thousand years they would be the intergalactic super soldiers that exist today, hmmm?” 

Leaf wondered how they had missed that after at least over one hundred cumulative years in the keep. Kaliber wasn’t just the Goddess of the Bullet Kin, she was somewhat of a force of reality herself. Not really the ‘Goddess of Guns’ as most would probably casually call her, she charged the entire life-death cycle here. Ammomancy itself was the manipulation of life and death, guns were just a small part of the equation. The ammomancy required in anything the Bullet Kin alone learnt had very little to do with guns! Only the Gunjurers could get away with actual gun magic! Leaf thought back to how much Spire must have gone through, what had she actually seen when she screamed into Kaliber’s face. 

“Wait, so if Kaliber has this strange infatuation with humans, then where exactly does it come from?” Leaf’s squeaky voice was oddly low. 

“Kaliber is ancient, so we’re not sure, but we do know that all of the very first residents of the gungeon were humans, we came after, or from them, whichever turn of phrase that sounds better to you,” Pyre bashed Leaf’s hand away from the diagram, “Careful with that, it’s real ink!” 

Pyre grabbed the book off of Leaf, “I said it was old, be careful!” 

Leaf didn’t speak but watched her as she started to turn through the dusty tome again, “You know, we actually came before the great bullet struck, the bullet itself was a punishment for the insolence that the first humans on the gungeon possessed against Kaliber!” Pyre said.

“So, the reason the Lich is so obsessed with Earth is because he lived there once? He’s human too?”

Pyre squeaked, “Yay! You’re remembering your greatness! Humans and gundead look pretty different but making a human into a member of the gundead isn’t a particularly hard feat on a ‘laws of the universe’ kind of level. When the Lich made us, he was in fact, not a Lich, but still a living human… you know it’s why we say you’re kind of like him down here.”

Leaf’s eyes grew wide.

Pyre threw the book at them, and another, different diagram was on the page. It did indeed look like an attempt to sketch out the falling of the great bullet on the gungeon. Probably a shoddy, amateurish rendition but it was fair enough for a drawing. 

“Hey, hey, you had an easier time of it than you think. You essentially… copied the Lich rather than replicated his power!” Pyre giggled again, “The first Bullet Kin were actually former humans, we think!” 

Leaf took that little water cup and tore it in half, hearing it crack, “What?!” 

“Well, not anymore. But we think the Lich enjoyed messing around with spirit transference, did you know the High Priest’s has his soul stored in his gun? It’s the thing keeping alive! How did you expect the Lich gave 5ft tall bullets the spark life? It was ripped from already living creatures! There is evidence to suggest that the creation of bullet sized bodies was also some kind of perseverance thing, like something you did if someone died and Kaliber weren’t gonna help. They are pretty easy to make in a gun filled dungeon and easy to shove souls inside.”

“Ripping out souls, but I never – I never ripped out any souls!” 

“That’s the thing, you managed to make humans into gundead using our own tools, in a way that didn’t leave a body behind discarded, you kept the entire ‘person’ intact essentially, wants, dreams, all of it! But they are made to live amongst us now! Humans are funny creatures, they put a lot of importance on what body they have in a way that dosen’t matter to us. They don’t die that much I guess.”

“Not leaving a body behind? I… managed to do that? 

“Well, it was generally the whole archive’s job at that point whilst they were carrying out research and fetching data on the Lich’s early experiments, but you were totally the ringmaster!” Pyre leaned forward, she looked as if she wanted to hug Leaf.

Leaf backed away, secretly kind of wanting a hug. She was so pleased with them, and for what? They had ruined the lives of so many gungeoneers but she, and likely the rest of the department, would have never seen those lives as being ‘ruined’.

“Well, I suppose ‘ring master’ is one way to put it.”

“Oh, you going up the Forge, I bet the others thought you were so brave, I think you were even braver running up to the Keep of the Lead Lord though!” 

Leaf never saw themselves as being brave, weren’t they only doing what a Bullet Kin was supposed to do? Leaf wondered if they had only felt that way after getting used to it for so long. Some of the kin made for the archives or R&G department alone might not even get to meet another gungeoneer let alone face certain death against one. Then again, even after all that, they had developed the ability to even feel bad for one of them. They didn’t feel like any kind of ‘master’ not now. 

“Yes, brave, me – can you please go on with what you were saying?” Leaf said.

“Oh, yes, of course!” Pyre’s enthusiasm seemed to have no off-switch, “You know, I still need to tell you why what you did was good for all of us, on like, a deeper level and stuff, even Kaliber appreciated your efforts I think!”

“Well she didn’t tell me personally…” 

“Ah, well, you know how much Kaliber loves earth right, humanity, if we could do anything that brought the gundead and humanity closer together is a good deed in her view, yes?” Pyre smirked, took the book away from them and closed it up, “It’s really a big shame that gungeon law took this away from us!”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Pyre?” Leaf was shaken by the implicitly malicious tone in her voice.

“Let me show you, I have another book here…” she shoved the red tome back onto the archive shelves and pulled out a book which looked even older, “Shh, this one is supposed to be even kind of a secret in the archives.” 

Pyre sat down again, still leaning, from way Leaf perceived it, way too close. She opened the page in-between the two of them on the arms of the chairs, although to her they would have been upside-down. The page landed on what appeared to be some kind of robotic contraption 

“Wait, what’s this supposed to be?”

“A robotic monster created by both humans and the gundead. To us, this machine is beyond ancient, to the humans, it should be about, one thousand of their years old now.”

“Humans and the gundead, but how and where?” 

Leaf wondered if this strange thing, all the metal, partly flesh, had something to do with them as well. Leaf was glad such a thing was now just a diagram in a book, it looked incredibly grotesque. All a mix of metal and flesh with no clear direction as to where one started and the other ended.

“Humanity would have never had accomplished uh, the building of grotesque technology like this if it weren’t for us Bullet Kin. Say, with help from a literally infinite Goddess and her magical Lich servant it wasn’t too hard establishing almost esoteric connections with the humans on Earth.”

“Connections,” Leaf spoke while still staring at the image of the disgusting metal contraption. Leaf would have guessed it was suffering in some way if it were not mostly robotic, “Wouldn’t that demand technology far beyond what the gungeon is currently in possession of?” 

“It wasn’t those kind of connections, not at first anyway, it was more us, leaving some of our secrets of ammomancy, gundead religion and such things for humans to find as well as some extra recruitment from beyond the Curtain, dimensional meddling by Kaliber herself. Out two religions started to intertwine themselves with each other. Not enough that we can make sense of each other, but enough that we have borrowed from each other’s talents.”

“Talents?”

“Oh, oh, this is gonna take some explaining!” 

Pyre excitedly flipped through the book again, this page showed a picture of a man, a human man, one which was somehow recognisable. Leaf thought back, they remembered a picture hanging in the Keep of the Lead Lord. A man with a long grey beard, holding a bright candle up against a deep blue backdrop,

“Wait, I’ve seen that picture before, it’s in the Keep of the Lead Lord!”

“Yep, that’s the Lich. Back when he was human, I mean, is it weird to you, seeing him like this?”

Leaf’s insides turned. Something about seeing the Lich this way was indeed, wrong. They hadn’t remembered what Spire had looked like when she was human, nor any of the other Bullet and Shotgun Kin that were now living in the gungeon. 

“Why not just look at the old face of our dear Lich while I go into detail about the exchanges humanity and the gungeon have had together?”

Leaf didn’t need instruction, they were already staring at the strange artwork, “Y-yes, go ahead, go right ahead…”

“Say, Humanity really was such a lowly species before the gungeon, and dearest Kaliber started helping them, yet it took them less than a thousand of their own years to become the universe’s greatest soldiers! Want to know who did that, it was us!” 

“Us…”

Leaf’s mind was in another place again. They weren’t searching their memories this time though; they were simply rethinking what the gungeon might have done to all those who entered it. How much pain had the others been through too?

“Yep! It was all us! We shared with them some of our magics, religion, and I think our views of interconnected life and death got to them too, kinda passively anyway! I wonder how many humans started dying in countless wars? It must have been an awful lot. But oh, look at them now, the whole universe is terrified of them, well, the whole universe apart from us! We kind of got some things from them too, learnt their language, some of their technology, but most of all, we pleased Kaliber by bringing in so many new souls into the gungeon!”

Leaf was speechless. Did they really know all this at some point? Were many of the gungeoneers just a product of the gungeon before they even set inside it? Looking back on their apology to Spire was kind of sickening. 

“Humans were.” Pyre’s head twisted, “Reforged in a way, to make them perfect candidates for Kaliber’s gun shows. Her meddling even more successful than she would have hoped!” 

“So the humans, most of the gungeoneers, the ones we have countlessly put ourselves out to mass slaughter too. The ones we let invade us time and time again, they are more like our slaves?” Leaf stared deeply into Pyre’s one eye. Her grin, it was getting so much on their nerves; it was crawling along their back. 

“Yes! I’d say so,” Pyre slammed to book closed with an echoing _thud,_ “There, now do you feel a little better about yourself?” 


	14. Integration

_I had to give up my desire. My way of reversing this. I could have, but one desire and this is what remained._

_Lich is that you there?_

_I sense that you are here. I cannot see you, I feel you because you are like me._

_Do you see me?_

_See me from all the way over here?_

_I am coming._

_I know I must be an awful lot weaker than you, I could never do what you do._

_I’m not a creator._

_I can’t create anything here._

_Was it Kaliber who had given you the ability to create, or was it you who chose to create when you were trapped here?_

_Was it the ability to create the reason Kaliber stuck you here?_

_Humans… wherever they come from, their creations had a sense of permanency, didn’t they?_

_The outside world, a place of permeant creation where you can be an induvial, a creature that is more than just a simple tool._

_Before Spire looked behind the curtain, she was at least granted a name, but now she is just one of Kaliber’s chosen._

_Did you have a name, Lich, what was your name? Did you forget it? Did the gungeon ask for it politely before taking it from you?_

_It steals names like that._

_I think Leaf said something like: ‘you must have been one of the good humans, the good gungeoneers’._

_Maybe they said it out of panic, but if, like me, were one of the good gungeoneers, then maybe you did the right thing when you betrayed Kaliber._

_Maybe I did too._

_When she gifted me, and I tried to run away?_

_That’s why I’m down here with you._

This place: It could only be described as ‘hell’ - the crying and screaming of those trapped here. I kept my head down. I only regarded the eyes looking at me from the floor. The small pits of hellfire, burning, spinning from above. Charred image of Kin like me left to lie as they rested or slowly died. I didn’t want to look at them, I couldn’t’. 

I wanted to keep going. I had only one destiny. 

_I was going to rot here._

_I accepted that._

_At least I’ll get to rot with someone, the only person who might ever understand me._

_My master, the Lich._

_We may never return to what we were._

_This our suffering._

_It is our shared hell._

I had to keep going. I needed to reach the Lich. The one thing I could put my faith back into, even when I had dismissed all the rest of it. The Lich was the master the gungeon as chosen by Kaliber herself, and then she put him here so that his suffering would last forever. Yet, we continued to obey him, listen to his teachings. He had been the first to create us through some means, but those means, I imagined, must have been close to what had happened to me. The Bullet Kin entrapped by Kaliber through her controlled proxy. In as much pain as the victims of creation themselves. 

Our precious cycle, one which must continue with all of us in sorry silence.

_Whether these bleak alterations be of form physical or of this tiny dungeon world Kaliber built for us: there was no escape from where we were destined to be._

_Yes, my master, Lich, I am happy to share this fate with you._

The entire journey was crawling.

_I had only seen you in my mind, Lich._

_I had known that Kaliber had ripped your skin away and replaced with the ammomancy that was put inside your bones._

_No matter how much it hurt, Kaliber wouldn’t let you die._

_At least when Kaliber stops caring, she can send our undead states finally into oblivion for true erasure._

_You stand with the gungeon._

_The timeless place of endless possibilities._

_No matter how many more innocents you trap inside._

_You will never be let go._

_No matter how many more will be made to share the same fate as you. The same destiny of exclusive confinement._

_Kaliber will never be satisfied._

_It won’t happen, not one tomorrow, tomorrow no longer exists: especially not down here and especially not to you my Lich._

_Please let me in._

_Let me in now._

_I want to see you for real._

_I deserve to see you._

I push it to the back of my mind: bullet hell, bullet hell, I am in hell. There was no other explanation. Even though my still painful transformation granted my goddess, I could still feel my tears pushing through my wrappings. I had no mind in place to regard anything around me. I just had to run, find and search. 

_It is so warm it is grating on me._

_I had not felt so warm since the Dead Blows recreated me._

_Do you always feel this way, dear Lich?_

_In constant pain from the fire of creation?_

_I would never want to be created again, and yet you must be created exclusively to what Kaliber wants you to?_

A door, which could only partly be seen, was opening ahead of me. It had made the same noise as the door to Smiley and Shade’s room, the Beholster’s room, Treadnaught’s room, The High Priest’s room. The same of the others, yet so out of reach. This might be hell, but yes, I am still in the gungeon. There is a replacement for the mythical ‘hell’ in the gungeon. No escape, no escape in death, no escape for your soul. Eternity meant eternity and tomorrow did not exist. 

The door stopped clicking, and I fell through.

_The Lich. He would be here._

_Let me get a look at you._

_Let me get a look at you through these thousands of eyes._

_The real ones, flooded with tears._

_I see you standing there._

_Do you really not see me?_

_You are floating in place with your magic, it’s so beautiful._

_So beautifully twisted, painful._

The Lich was standing behind a desk and standing in a wondrous circle of death. He had his own buried dead. Tombstones, almost like the ones that I had once seen in the Keep of the Lead Lord surrounded him. Whatever stone gardens he had built, I suspected that it would have provided more dignity to be buried with him than to be left to lie and constantly revived in the Hollow. Through these vague, wet eyes, I could see the wooden desk with vials of gunpowder, a beautiful book with gold trimmings and a little globe of green and blue, an image of earth.

_I could see you now, teal bones and only a mere coat and hat to cover you. Your eyes replaced with bullets by Kaliber._

_She has made you naked._

_She sees all of you._

_As I am forced to see all for her._

I drag myself off the floor. I still kept my head as low as possible. I knew the Lich wouldn’t care, but my shame triumphed over everything else: everything but desire: my desire for unity.

_Lich, Lich, please hear me!_

I don’t know what I said. It was something in-between manic, esoteric gurgling and usual cute Bullet Kin chimes, albeit entrenched in known sorrow.

_He’s coming to me. He is drawing closer._

_I could barely contain my tears as I looked upon him._

_I trembled, holding my hand out to him._

_It was enlightening through these eyes: meeting someone who has suffered just like I did._

_Through your bullet eyes, you reach out to me._

_Would you be crying too if you still had your eyes?_

_We were the same!_

_We were the same!_

_The tears, they are flooding me too! The burning just still won’t stop, won’t ever stop!_

_The boned hand reached out to mine, and I took it._

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One. 

_I’m so glad I could be here._


End file.
